
Pass t g 7 6 3 



/ 

LECTURES 



OS 

THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, 
AID THE GOOD. 



BY M. V. COUSIN. 



INCREASED BY 



Jto Q$pnW mx $xm\ %xt 



TEANSLATED, WITH THE APPEOBATION OF M. COUSIN, BY 



0. W. WIGHT, 



TRANSLATOR OF COUSIN'S " COURSE OF THE HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY," AMERICAN 

EDITOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART., AUTHOR 

OF " THE ROMANCE OF ABELARD AND HELOISE," ETC., ETC. 



" God is the life of the soul, as the soul is the life of the body, 

The Platonists and the Fathers 




NEW YOEK: 
I>. APPLETON & CO., 346 & 348 BROADWAY, 

AND 16 LITTLE BRITAIN, LONDON. 
M DCCC LIV. 



.V%Lg<V 



jfir.tei^d According to Act ot Congress, in the year 1854, 

By D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
District, of New York. 



• V/ « - * ♦ * I «, 



% " 



SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART., 

professor of 3Lopjtc anti iKUtaprjgsics in tfje SEnibfrsttg of IStmtburgf) ; 

WHO HAS CLEARLY ELUCIDATED, AND, WITH GREAT ERUDITION, 

SKETCHED THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF 

COMMON SENSE ; 

WHO, FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF HIS ILLUSTRIOUS COUNTRYMAN, REID, 

HAS ESTABLISHED THE DOCTRINE OF THE 

IMMEDIATENESS OF PERCEPTION, 

THEREBY FORTTFYING PHILOSOPHY AGAINST THE ASSAULTS OF SKEPTICISM; 

WHO, TAKING A STEP IN ADVANCE OF ALL OTHERS, 

HAS GIVEN TO THE WORLD A DOCTJRINE OF THE 

CONDITIONED, 

THE ORIGINALITY AND IMPORTANCE OF WHICH ARE ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE 
FEW QUALIFIED TO JUDGE IN SUCH MATTERS ; WHOSE 

NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS 

COMPLETES THE HITHERTO UNFINISHED WORKS OF ARISTOTLE J 

THIS TRANSLATION OF M. COUSIN'S 
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, 

IN ADMIRATION OF A PROFOUND AND INDEPENDENT THINKER, 

OF AN INCOMPARABLE MASTER OF PHILOSOPHIC CRITICISM; 

AS A TOKEN OF ESTEEM FOR A MAN IN WHOM GENIUS 

AND ALMOST UNEQUALLED LEARNING 

HAVE BEEN ADORNED BY 

TRUTH, BEAUTY, AND GOODNESS OF LIFE. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



For some time past we have been asked, on various 
sides, to collect in a body of doctrine the theories scat- 
tered in our different works, and to sum up, in just pro- 
portions, what men are pleased to call our philosophy. 

This resume was wholly made. We had only to take 
again the lectures already quite old, but little known, be- 
cause they belonged to a time when the courses of the 
Faculte des Lettres had scarcely any influence beyond 
the Quartier Latin, and, also, because they could be found 
only in a considerable collection, comprising all our first 
instruction, from 1815 to 1821. 1 These lectures were 
there, as it were, lost in the crowd. "We have drawn 
them hence, and give them apart, severely corrected, in 
the hope that they will thus be accessible to a greater 



1 1st Series of our work, Gouts de VHistoire de la Philosophie Moderne, five 
volumes. 



8 

number of readers, and that their true character will the 
better appear. 

The eighteen lectures that compose this volume have 
in fact the particular trait that, if the history of philos- 
ophy furnishes their frame-work, philosophy itself occu- 
pies in them the first place, and that, instead of re- 
searches of erudition and criticism, they present a regu- 
lar exposition of the doctrine which was at first fixed 
in our mind, which has not ceased to preside over our 
labors. 

This book, then, contains the abridged but exact ex- 
pression of our convictions on the fundamental points of 
philosophic science. In it will be openly seen the 
method that is the soul of our enterprise, our principles, 
our processes, our results. 

Under these three heads, the True, the Beautiful, the 
Good, we embrace psychology, placed by us at the head 
of all philosophy, sesthetics, ethics, natural right, even 
public right to a certain extent, finally theodicea, that 
perilous rendezvous of all systems, where different 
principles are condemned or justified by their conse- 
quences. 

It is the affair of our book to plead its own cause. We 
only desire that it may be appreciated and judged accord- 
ing to what it really is, and not according to an opinion 
too much accredited. 



9 

Eclecticism is persistently represented as the doctrine 
to which men deign to attach our name. "We declare 
that eclecticism is very dear to us, for it is in our eyes 
the light of the history of philosophy ; but the source 
of that light is elsewhere. Eclecticism is one of the 
most important and most useful applications of the phi- 
losophy which we teach, but it is not its principle. 

Our true doctrine, our true flag is spiritualism, that 
philosophy as solid as generous, which began with Soc- 
rates and Plato, which the Gospel has spread abroad in 
the world, which Descartes put under the severe forms 
of modern genius, which in the seventeenth century was 
one of the glories and forces of our country, which per- 
ished with the national grandeur in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, which at the commencement of the present century 
M. Royer-Collard came to re-establish in public instruc- 
tion, whilst M. de Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and 
M. Quatremere de Quincy transferred it into literature 
and the arts. To it is rightly given the name of spiritu- 
alism, because its character in fact is that of subordi- 
nating the senses to the spirit, and tending, by all the 
means that reason acknowledges, to elevate and ennoble 
man. It teaches the spirituality of the soul, the liberty 
and responsibility of human actions, moral obligation, 
disinterested virtue, the dignity of justice, the beauty of 
charity ; and beyond the limits of this world it shows a 



10 

God, author and type of humanity, who, after having 
evidently made man for an excellent end, will not aban- 
don him in the mysterious development of his destiny. 
This philosophy is the natural ally of all good causes. 
It sustains religious sentiment ; it seconds true art, poesy 
worthy of the name, and a great literature ; it is the sup- 
port of right ; it equally repels the craft of the dema- 
gogue and tyranny ; it teaches all men to respect and 
value themselves, and, little by little, it conducts human 
societies to the true republic, that dream of all generous 
souls which in our times can be realized in Europe only 
by constitutional monarchy. 

To aid, with all our power, in setting up, defending, 
and propagating this noble philosophy, such is the 
object that early inspired us, that has sustained during 
a career already lengthy, in which difficulties have not 
been wanting. Thank God, time has rather strength- 
ened than weakened our convictions, and we end as we 
began : this new edition of one of our first works is a 
last effort in favor of the holy cause for which we have 
combated nearly forty years. 

May our voice be heard by new generations as it was 
by the serious youth of the Eestoration ! Yes, it is par- 
ticularly to you that we address this work, young men 
whom we no longer know, but whom we bear in our 
heart, because you are the seed and the hope of the 



11 

future. We have shown you the principle of our evils 
and their remedy. If you love liberty and your coun- 
try, shun what has destroyed them. Far from you be 
that sad philosophy which preaches to you materialism 
and atheism as new doctrines destined to regenerate the 
world : they kill, it is true, but they do not regenerate. 
Do not listen to those superficial spirits who give them 
selves out as profound thinkers, because after Yoltaire 
they have discovered difficulties in Christianity: meas- 
ure your progress in philosophy by your progress in ten- 
der veneration for the religion of the Gospel. Be well 
persuaded that, in France, democracy will always tra- 
verse liberty, that it brings all right into disorder, and 
through disorder into dictatorship. Ask, then, only a 
moderated liberty, and attach yourself to that with all 
the powers of your soul. Do not bend the knee to for- 
tune, but accustom yourselves to bow to law. Entertain 
the noble sentiment of respect. Know how to admire, — 
possess the worship of great men and great things. 
Reject that enervating literature, by turns gross and 
refined, which delights in painting the miseries of hu- 
man nature, which caresses all our weaknesses, which 
pays court to the senses and the imagination, instead of 
speaking to the soul and awakening thought. Guard 
yourselves against the malady of our century, that fatal 
taste of an accommodating life, incompatible with all 



12 

generous ambition. "Whatever career yon embrace, pro- 
pose to yourselves an elevated aim, and put in its service 
an unalterable constancy. Surmm cor da, value highly 
your heart, wherein is seen all philosophy, that which 
we have retained from all our studies, which we have 
taught to your predecessors, which we leave to you as 
our last word, our final lecture. 

V. COUSIN. 

June 15, 1853. 



A too indulgent public having promptly rendered 
necessary a new edition of this book, we are forced to 
render it less unworthy of the suffrages which it has 
obtained, by reviewing it with severe attention, by intro- 
ducing a mass of corrections in detail, and a consider- 
able number of additions, among which the only ones 
that need be indicated here are some pages on Chris- 
tianity at the end of Lecture XVL, and the notes placed 
as an Appendix 1 at the end of the volume, on various 



» 1 The Appendix lias been translated by Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton of 
the British Museum, who is alone entitled to credit and alone respon- 
sible.— Tb. 



13 

works of French masters which, we have quite recently 
seen in England, which have confirmed and increased 
our old admiration for our national art of the seven- 
teenth century. 

November 1, 1853. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



The nature of this publication is s&fficiently explained 
in the preface of M. Cousin. 

We have attempted to render his book, without 
comment, faithfully into English. Not only have we 
endeavored to give his thought without increase or 
diminution, but have also tried to preserve the main 
characteristics of his style. On the one hand, we 
have carefully shunned idioms peculiar to the French ; 
on the other, when permitted by the laws of structure 
common to both languages, we have followed the gen- 
eral order of sentences, even the succession of words. 
It has been our aim to make this work wholly Cousin's 
in substance, and in form as nearly his as possible, 
with a total change of dress. Tnat, however, we may 
have nowhere missed a shade of meaning, nowhere 
introduced a gallicism, is too much to be hoped for, 
too much to be demanded. 

M. Cousin, in his Philosophical Discussions, defines 
the terms that he uses. In the translation of these we 
have maintained uniformity, so that in this regard no 
farther explanation is necessary. 



16 

This is, perhaps, in a philosophical point of view, 
the most important of all M. Cousin's works, for it 
contains a complete summary and lucid exposition of 
the various parts of his system. It is now the last 
word of European philosophy, and merits serious and 
thoughtful attention. 

This and many more like it, are needed in these 
times, when noisy and pretentious demagogues are 
speaking of metaphysics with idiotic laughter, when 
utilitarian statesmen are sneering at philosophy, when 
undisciplined sectarians of every kind are decrying it ; 
when, too, earnest men, in state and church, men on 
whose shoulders the social world really rests, are in- 
voking philosophy, not only as the best instrument of 
the highest culture and the severest mental discipline, 
but also as the best human means of guiding politics 
towards the eternally true and the eternally just, of pre- 
serving theology from the aberrations of a zeal without 
knowledge, and from the perversion of the interested 
and the cunning ; when many an artist, who feels the 
nobility of his calling, who would address the mind of 
man rather than his senses, is asking a generous philoso- 
phy to explain to him that ravishing and torturing Ideal 
which is ever eluding his grasp, which often discourages 
unless understood ; when, above all, devout and tender 
souls are learning to prize philosophy, since, in harmony 
with Revelation, it strengthens their belief in God, 
freedom, immortality. 



translator's preface. 17 

Grateful to an indulgent public, on both sides of the 
ocean, for a kindly and very favorable reception of our 
version of M. Cousin's " Course of the History of Modern 
Philosophy," we acid this translation of his "Lectures 
on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good," hoping that 
his explanation of human nature will aid some in solving 
the grave problem of life, — for there are always those, 
and the most gifted, too, who feel the need of under- 
standing themselves, — believing that his eloquence, his 
elevated sentiment, and elevated thought, will afford 
gratification to a refined taste, a chaste imagination, 

and a disciplined mind. 

O. W. WIGHT. 
London, Dec. 21, 1853. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The Publishers have to express their thanks to M. Cousin 
for his cordial concurrence, and especially for his kindness in 
transmitting the sheets of the French original as printed, so 
that this translation appears almost simultaneously with it. 

Edinburgh, 38 Geoege-street, 
Dec. 26, 1853. 



THE STEM. 



CONTENTS 



Attthoe's Peeface Page 7 

Translator's Peeface 15 

Discocese Peonocnced at tee Opening- of the Oouese. — 
Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century 25 

Spirit and general principles of the Course. — Object of the Lectures of this 
year: — application of the principles of which an exposition is given, to the 
three Problems of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. 

PART FIRST.— THE TRUE. 

Lecttjee I. — The Existence of Uniyeesal and Necessary 
PErNCIPLES 39 

Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute truths that 
may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is the problem of the 
philosophy of our time. — Universal and necessary principles. — Examples 
of different kinds of such principles. — Distinction between universal and 
necessary principles and general principles. — Experience alone is inca- 
pable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and also incapable 
of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the knowledge of the sensible 
world. — Reason as being that faculty of ours which discovers to us these 
principles. — The study of universal and necessary principles introduces 
us to the highest parts of philosophy. 

Lecttjee II. — Oeigln of Uniyeesal and Necessaey Peinci- 

PLES 51 

Resume of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the origin of 
universal and necessary principles. — Danger of this question, and its ne- 
cessity. — Different forms under which truth presents Itself to us, and the 
successive order of these forms : theory of spontaneity and reflection. — 
The primitive form of principles ; abstraction that disengages them from 



20 CONTENTS. 

that form, and gives them their actual form. — Examination and refutation 
of the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an induc- 
tion founded on particular notions. 

Lecture III. — On the Value of Universal and Necessary 
Peinciples Page 65 

Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism. — Eecurrence to the 
theory of spontaneity and reflection. 

Lecture IV. — God the Peinciple of Peinciples 75 

Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute truth? — 
Four hypotheses : Absolute truth may reside either in us, in particular 
beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We perceive absolute truth, 
we do not constitute it. 2. Particular beings participate in absolute truth, 
but do not explain it ; refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in 
itself; defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God. — Plato; St. Augustine ; 
Descartes ; Malebranche ; Fenelon ; Bossuet ; Leibnitz. — Truth the medi- 
ator between God and man. — Essential distinctions. 

Lecture V. — On Mysticism 102 

Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and mysticism. Mysti- 
cism consists in pretending to know God without an intermediary. — Two 
sorts of mysticism. — Mysticism of sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two 
sensibilities — the one external, the other internal, and corresponding to 
the soul as external sensibility corresponds to nature. — Legitimate part of 
sentiment. — Its aberrations. — Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus : God, or 
absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by pure thought. — 
Ecstasy. — Mixture of superstition and abstraction in mysticism. — Conclu- 
sion of the first part of the course. 



PART SECOND.— THE BEAUTIFUL. 

Lecture VI. — The Beautiful in the Mind on Man 123 

The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art is, as in 
the investigation of the true, to commence by psychology. — Faculties of 
the soul that unite in the perception of the beautiful. — The senses givo 
only the agreeable ; reason alone gives the idea of the beautiful. — Refuta- 
tion of empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the beautiful. — Pre- 
eminence of reason. — Sentiment of the beautiful ; different from sensation 
and desire. — Distinction between the sentiment of the beautiful and that 
of the sublime. — Imagination. — Influence of sentiment on imagination. — 
Influence of imagination on sentiment. — Theory of taste. 



CONTENTS. 21 

Lectuee VII. — The Beautiful in Objects Page 140 

Eefutatiou of different theories on the nature of the beautiful : the beautiful 
cannot be reduced to what is useful. — Nor to convenience. — Nor to pro- 
portion. — Essential characters of the beautiful. — Different kinds of beau- 
ties. The beautiful and the sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual 
beauty. Moral beauty. — Ideal beauty : it is especially moral beauty. — 
God, the first principle of the beautiful. — Theory of Plato. 

Lecture VIII. — On Aet 154 

Genius : — its attribute is creative power. — Eefutation of the opinion that art 
is the imitation of nature. — M. Emeric David, and M. Quatremere de 
Quincy. — Eefutation of the theory of illusion. That dramatic art has not 
solely for its end to excite the passions of terror and pity. — Nor even di- 
rectly the moral and religious sentiment. — The proper and direct object of 
art is to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful ; this idea 
and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the affinity between the 
beautiful and the good, and by the relation of ideal beauty to its principle, 
which is God. — True mission of art. 



Lecture IX. — The Diffeeent Aets 165 

Expression is the general law of art. — Division of arts. — Distinction between 
liberal arts and trades.— Eloquence itself, philosophy, and history do not 
make a part of the fine arts. — That the arts gain nothing by encroaching 
upon each other, and usurping each other's means and processes. — Classi- 
fication of the arts : — its true principle is expression. — Comparison of arts 
with each other. — Poetry the first of arts. 

Lectuee X. — Feench Aet in the Seventeenth Centuey . . 178 

Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but the different 
schools of art. Example : — French art in the seventeenth century. French 
poetry: — Corneille. Eacine. Moliere. La Fontaine. Boileau. — Paint- 
ing: — Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain. Champagne. — Engraving. — 
Sculpture: — Sarrazin. The Anguiers. Girardon. Pujet. — Le Notre. — 
Architecture. 



PART THIRD.— THE GOOD. 

Lectuee XL — Peimaet Notions of Common Sense 215 

Extent of the question of the good. — Position of the question according to 
the psychological method: What is, in regard to the good, the natural 
belief of mankind ? — The natural beliefs of humanity must not be sought 



22 CONTENTS. 

in a pretended state of nature. — Study of the sentiments and ideas of men 
in languages, in life, in consciousness. — Disinterestedness and devoted- 
ness. — Liberty. — Esteem and contempt. — Eespect. — Admiration and 
indignation. — Dignity. — Empire of opinion. — Kidicule. — Eegret and 
repentance. — Natural and necessary foundations of all justice. — Dis- 
tinction between fact and right. — Common sense, true and false phi- 
losophy. 

Lecture XII. — The Ethics of Interest Page 229 

Exposition of the doctrine of interest. — What there is of truth in this doc- 
trine. — Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and desire, and thereby 
abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the fundamental distinction be- 
tween good and evil. 3d. It cannot explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor 
right. 5th. Nor the principle of merit and demerit. — Consequences of the 
ethics of interest : that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to des- 
potism. 

Lecture XIII. — Other Defective Principles 255 

The ethics of sentiment. — The ethics founded on the principle of the 
interest of the greatest number. — The ethics founded on the will of God 
alone. — The ethics founded on the punishments and rewards of another 
life. 

Lecture XIV. — True Principles of Ethics 274 

Description of the different facts that compose the moral phenomena. — 
Analysis of each of these facts : — 1st, Judgment and idea of the good. 
That this judgment is absolute. Eelation between the true and the good. 
— 2d, Obligation. Refutation of the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea 
of the good from obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of 
the good. — 3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion of 
liberty. — 4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments and rewards. 
— 5th, Moral sentiments. — Harmony of all these facts in nature and 
science. 

Lecture XV. — Private and Public Ethics 301 

Application of the preceding principles. — General formula of interest, — to 
obey reason. — Rule for judging whether an action is or is not conformed 
to reason, — to elevate the motive of this action into a maxim of universal 
legislation. — Individual ethics. It is not towards the individual, but 
towards the moral person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual 
duties, — to respect and develop the moral person. — Social ethics, — duties 
of justice and duties of charity. — Civil society. Government. Law. The 
right to punish. 



CONTENTS. 23 

Lecture XVI. — God the Peixciple of the Idea of the 
Good Page 325 

Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation of moral 
truth, of the good, and of the moral person. — Liberty of God. — The divine 
justice and charity. — God the sanction of the moral law. Immortality of 
the soul ; argument from merit and demerit ; argument from the simplicity 
of the soul; argument from final causes. — Eeligious sentiment. — Adora- 
tion. — "Worship. — Moral beauty of Christianity. 

Lecture XYII. — Resume of Docteixe 346 

Eeview of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the three orders of 
facts on which this doctrine rests, with the relation of each one of them 
to the modern school that has recognized and developed it, but almost al- 
ways exaggerated it. — Experience and empiricism. — Eeason and idealism. 
— Sentiment and mysticism. — Theodicea. Defects of different known sys- 
tems. — The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the character of 
certainty and reality that this process gives to it. 

APPENDIX 371 



LECTURES 

ON 

THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD. 



DISCOUKSE 

PKONOTJNCED AT THE OPENING OF THE COUESE, 
December 4, 1817. 

PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

Spirit and general principles of the Course. — Object of the Lectures of tins 
year : — application of the principles of which an exposition is given, to 
the three Problems of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. 

It seems natural that a century, in its beginning, should borrow 
its philosophy from the century that preceded it. But, as free 
and intelligent beings, we are not born merely to continue our 
predecessors, but to increase their work, and also to do our own. 
We cannot accept from them an inheritance except under the 
condition of improving it. Our first duty is, then, to render to 
ourselves an account of the philosophy of the eighteenth century ; 
to recognize its character and its principles, the problems which 
it agitated, and the solutions which it gave of them ; to discern, 
in fine, what it transmits to us of the true and the productive, 
and what it also leaves of the sterile and the false, in order that, 
with reflective choice, we may embrace the former and reject the 
latter. 1 Placed at the entrance of the new times, let us know, 

1 We have so much felt the necessity of understanding well the philosophy 
of the century that ours succeeds, that three times we have undertaken the 

2 



26 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

first of all, with what views we would occupy ourselves. More- 
over, — why should I not say it ? — after two years of instruction, 
in which the professor, in some sort, has been investigating him- 
self, one has a right to demand of him what he is ; what are his 
most general principles on all the essential parts of philosophic 
science ; what flag, in fine, in the midst of parties which contend 
with each other so violently, he proposes for you, young men, 
who frequent this auditory, and who are called upon to partici- 
pate in a destiny still so uncertain and so obscure in the nine- 
teenth century, to follow. 

It is not patriotism, it is a profound sentiment of truth and 
justice, which makes us place the whole philosophy now expanded 
in the world under the invocation of the name of Descartes. 
Yes, the whole of modern philosophy is the work of this great 
man, for it owes to him the spirit that animates it, and the 
method that constitutes its power. 

After the downfall of scholasticism and the mournful disrup- 
tures of the sixteenth century, the first object which the bold 
good sense of Descartes proposed to itself was to make philosophy 
a human science, like astronomy, physiology, medicine, subject 
to the same uncertainties and to the same aberrations, but capa- 
ble also of the same progress. 

Descartes encountered the skepticism spread on every side in 
the train of so many revolutions, ambitious hypotheses, born out 
of the first use of an ill-regulated liberty, and the old formulas 
surviving thje ruins of scholasticism. In his courageous passion 
for truth, he resolved to reject, provisorily at least, all the ideas 
that hitherto he had received without controlling them, firmly 
decidecj not to admit any but those which, after a serious exami- 
nation, might appear to him evident. But he perceived that 

history of philosophy in the eighteenth century, here first, in 1818, then in 
1819 and 1820, and that is the subject of the last three volumes of the 1st 
Series of our works ; finally, we resumed it in 1829, vol. ii. and iii. of the 2d 
Series. 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 27 

there was one thing which he could not reject, even provisorily, 
in his universal doubt, — that thing was the existence itself of his 
doubt, that is to say, of his thought ; for although all the rest 
might be only an illusion, this fact, that he thought, could not 
be an illusion. Descartes, therefore, stopped at this fact, of an 
irresistible evidence, as at the first truth which he could accept 
without fear. Recognizing at the same time that thought is the 
necessary instrument of all the investigations which he might 
propose to himself, as well as the instrument of the human race 
in the acquisition of its natural knowledges, 1 he devoted himself 
to a regular study of it, to the analysis of thought as the condi- 
tion of all legitimate philosophy, and upon this solid foundation 
he reared a doctrine of a character at once certain and living, 
capable of resisting skepticism, exempt from hypotheses, and 
affranchised from the formulas of the schools. 

Thus the analysis of thought, and of the mind which is the 
subject of it, that is to say, psychology, has become the point of 
departure, the most general principle, the important method of 
modern philosophy. 2 

Nevertheless, it must indeed be owned, philosophy has not en- 
tirely lost, and sometimes still retains, since Descartes and in 
Descartes himself, its old habits. It rarely belongs to the s:.me 
man to open and run a career, and usually the inventor succumbs 
under the weight of his own invention. So Descartes, after 
having so well placed the point of departure for all philosophical 
investigation, more than once forgets analysis, and returns, at 
least in form, to the ancient philosophy. 3 The true method, 

1 This word was used by the old English writers, and there is no reason 
why it should not be retained. 

2 On the method of Descartes, see 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 20 ; 2d 
Series, vol. i., lecture 2; vol. ii., lecture 11; 3d Series, vol. hi., Philosophie 
Moderne, as well as Fragments de Philosophie Cartesienne ; 5th Series, In- 
struction P-ublique, vol. ii., Defense de V Universite et de la Philosophie, p. 
112, etc. 

3 On this return to the scholastic form in Descartes, see 1st Series, vol iv., 
lecture 12, especially three articles of the Journal des Savante, August, Sep- 
tember, and October, 1850, in which we have examined anew the principles 



28 OPENING DISCOUKSE. 

again, is more than once effaced in the hands of his first succes- 
sors, under the always increasing influence of the mathematical 
method. 

Two periods may be distinguished in the Cartesian era, — one 
in which the method, in its newness, is often misconceived ; the 
other, in which one is forced, at least, to re-enter the salutary 
way opened by Descartes. To the first belong Malebranche, 
Spinoza, Leibnitz himself; to the second, the philosophers of the 
eighteenth century. 

Without doubt Malebranche, upon some points, descended 
very far into interior investigation ; but most of the time he gave 
himself up to wander in an imaginary world, and lost sight of 
the real world. It is not a method that is wanting to Spinoza, 
but a good method ; his error consists in having applied to phi- 
losophy the geometrical method, which proceeds by axioms, defi- 
nitions, theorems, corollaries ; no one has made less use of the 
psychological method ; that is the principle and the condemna- 
tion of his system. The Nouveaux Essais sur VEntendement 
Humain exhibit Leibnitz opposing observation to observation, 
analysis to analysis ; but his genius usually hovers over science, 
instead of advancing in it step by step ; hence the results at 
which he arrives are often only brilliant hypotheses, for example, 
the pre-established harmony, now relegated among the analogous 
hypotheses of occasional causes and a plastic mediator. In gen- 
eral, the philosophy of the seventeenth century, by not employing 
with sufficient rigor and firmness the method with which Des- 
cartes had armed it, produced little else than systems, ingenious 
without doubt, bold and profound, but often also rash, — systems 
that have failed to keep their place in science. 1 In fact, nothing 
is durable except that which is founded upon a sound method ; 



of Cartesianism, a propos the Leibnitii Animadversiones ad Cartesii Principia 
Philosophies . 

1 See on Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, 2d Series, vol. ii., lectures 
11 and 12; 3d Series, vol. iv., Introduction aux (Etivres Philosophiques de M. 
de Bvran, p. 288 ; and the Fragments de Philosophic Cartisiemie, passim. 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 29 

time destroys all the rest ; time, which re-collects, fecundates, ag- 
grandizes the least germs of truth deposited in the humblest 
analyses, strikes without pity, engulfs hypotheses, even thag$ of 
genius. Time takes a step, and arbitrary systems are overturned ; 
the statues of their authors alone remain standing over their 
ruins. The task of the friend of truth is to search for the useful 
remains of them, that survive and can serve for new and more 
solid constructions. 

The philosophy of the eighteenth century opens the second 
period of the Cartesian era ; it proposed to itself to apply the 
method already discovered and too much neglected, — it applied 
itself to the analysis of thought. Disabused of ambitious and 
sterile attempts, and, like Descartes, disdainful of the past, the 
eighteenth century dared to think that every thing in philosophy 
was to be done over again, and that, in order not to wander 
anew, it was necessary to set out with the modest study of man. 
Instead, therefore, of building up all at once systems risked upon 
the universality of things, it undertook to examine what man 
knows, what he can know ; it brought back entire philosophy to 
the study of our faculties, as physics had just been brought back 
to the study of the properties of bodies, — which was giving to 
philosophy, if not its end, at least its true beginning. 

The great schools which divide the eighteenth century are the 
English and French school, the Scotch school, and the German 
school, that is to say, the school of Locke and Condillac, that of 
Reid, that of Kant. It is impossible to misconceive the common 
principle which animates them, the unity of their method. When 
one examines with impartiality the method of Locke, he sees that 
it consists in the analysis of thought; and it is thereby that 
Locke is a disciple, not of Bacon and Hobbes, but of our great 
countryman, Descartes. 1 To study the human understanding as 
it is in each one of us, to recognize its powers, and also its limits, 
is the problem which the English philosopher proposed to him- 

1 On Locke, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 1, especially 2d Series, vol. iii., 
Examen du Systeme de Locke. 



30 OPENING DISCOUKSE. 

self, and which he attempted to solve. I do not wish to judge 
here of the solution which he gave of this problem ; I limit my- 
self to indicating clearly what was for him the fundamental 
problem. Condillac, the French disciple of Locke, made himself 
everywhere the apostle of analysis ; and analysis was also in him, 
or at least should have been, the study of thought. No philoso- 
pher, not even Spinoza, has wandered farther than Condillac 1 from 
the true experimental method, and has strayed farther on the 
route of abstractions, even verbal abstractions ; but, strange 
enough, no one is severer than he against hypotheses, save that 
of the statue-man. The author of the Traits des Sensations has 
very unfaithfully practised analysis ; but he speaks of it without 
cessation. The Scotch school combats Locke and Condillac ; it 
combats them, but with their own arms, with the same method 
which it pretends to apply better. 2 In Germany, Kant wishes to 
replace in light and honor the superior element of human con- 
sciousness, left in the shade, and decried by the philosophy of his 
times ; and for that end, what does he do ? He undertakes a 
profound examination of the faculty of knowing ; the title of his 
principal work is, Critique of Pure Reason ; 3 it is a critique, 
that is to say again, an analysis ; the method of Kant is then no 
other than that of Locke and Reid. Follow it until it reaches 
the hands of Fichte, 4 the successor of Kant, who died but a few 
years since ; there, again, the analysis of thought is given as the 
foundation of philosophy. Kant was so firmly established in the 
subject of knowledge, that he could scarcely go out of it — that, 
in feet, he never did legitimately go out of it. Fichte plunged 
into the subject of knowledge so deeply that he buried himself 
in it, and absorbed in the human me all existences, as well as all 



1 1st Series, vol. ill. , lectures 2 and &. 

2 1st Series, vol. iv., lectures on the Scotch School. 

a See on Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason, vol. v. of the 1st Series, 
where that great work is examined with as much extent as that of Eeid in 
vol. iv., and the Essay of Locke in vol. iii. of the 2d Series. 

4 On Fichte, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 12; 3d Series, vol. iv., Introduction 
auz CEuvres de M. de Biran, p. 824 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 31 

sciences — sad shipwreck of analysis, which signalizes at once its 
greatest effort and its rock ! 

The same spirit, therefore, governs all the schools of the 
eighteenth century ; this century disdains arbitrary formulas ; it 
has a horror for hypotheses, and attaches itself, or pretends to 
attach itself, to the observation of facts, and particularly to the 
analysis of thought. 

Let us acknowledge with freedom and with grief, that the 
eighteenth century applied analysis to all things without pity 
and without measure. It cited before its tribunal all doctrines, 
all sciences ; neither the metaphysics of the preceding age, with 
their imposing systems, nor the arts with their prestige, nor the 
governments with their ancient authority, nor the religions with 
their majesty, — nothing found favor before it. Although it spied 
abysses at the bottom of what it called philosophy, it threw itself 
into them with a courage which is not without grandeur ; for 
the grandeur of man is to prefer what he believes to be truth to 
himself. The eighteenth century let loose tempests. Humanity 
no more progressed, except over ruins. The world was again 
agitated in that state of disorder in which it had already been 
once seen, at the decline of the ancient beliefs, and before the 
triumphs of Christianity, when men wandered through all con- 
traries, without power to rest anywhere, given up to every dis- 
quietude of spirit, to every misery of heart, fanatical and atheisti- 
cal, mystical and incredulous, voluptuous and sanguinary. 1 But 
if the philosophy of the eighteenth century has left us a vacuity 
for an inheritance, it has also left us an energetic and fecund love 
of truth. The eighteenth century was the age of criticism and 
destructions ; the nineteenth should be that of intelligent rehabil- 
itations. It belongs to it to find in a profounder analysis of 



1 We expressed ourselves thus in December, 1817, when, following the 
great wars of the Eevolution, and after the downfall of the empire, the con- 
stitutional iaonarchy, still poorly established, left the future of France and 
of the world obscure. It is sad to be obliged to hold the same language in 
1835, over the ruins accumulated around us. 



32 OPENING DISCOUKSE. 

thought the principles of the future, and with so many remains 
to raise, in fine, an edifice that reason may be able to acknowl- 
edge. 

A feeble but zealous workman, I come to bring my stone ; I 
come to do my work ; I come to extract from the midst of the 
ruins what has not perished, what cannot perish. This course is 
at once a return to the past, an effort towards the future. I pro- 
pose neither to attack nor to defend any of the three great schools 
that divide the eighteenth century. I will not attempt to per- 
petuate and envenom the warfare which divides them, compla- 
cently designating the differences which separate them, without 
taking an account of the community of method which unites 
them. I come, on the contrary, a devoted soldier of philosophy, 
a common friend of all the schools which it has produced, to 
offer to all the words of peace. 

The unity of modern philosophy, as we have said, resides in 
its method, that is to say, in the analysis of thought — a method 
superior to its own results, for it contains in itself the means of 
repairing the errors that escape it, of indefinitely adding new 
riches to riches already acquired. The physical sciences them- 
selves have no other unity. The great physicians who have ap- 
peared within two centuries, although united amongst themselves 
by the same point of departure and by the same end, generally 
accepted, have nevertheless proceeded with independence and in 
ways often opposite. Time has re-collected in their different 
theories the part of truth that produced them and sustained them ; 
it has neglected their errors from which they were unable to ex- 
tricate themselves, and uniting all the discoveries worthy of the 
name, it has little by little formed of them a vast and harmoni- 
ous whole. Modern philosophy has also been enriched during 
the two centuries with a multitude of exact observations, of solid 
and profound theories, for which it is indebted to the common 
method. What has hindered her from progressing at an equal 
pace with the physical sciences whose sister she is ? She has 
been hindered by not understanding better her own interests, by 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 33 

not tolerating diversities that are inevitable, that are even useful, 
and by not profiting* by the truths which all the particular doc- 
trines contain, in order to deduce from them a general doctrine, 
which is successively and perpetually purified and aggrandized. 

Not, indeed, that I would recommend that blind syncretism 
which destroyed the school of Alexandria, which attempted to 
bring contrary systems together by force ; what I recommend is 
an enlightened eclecticism, which, judging with equity, and even 
with benevolence, all schools, borrows from them what they pos- 
sess of the true, and neglects what in them is false. Since the 
spirit of party has hitherto succeeded so ill with us, let us try the 
spirit of conciliation. Human thought is immense. Each school 
has looked at it only from its own point of view. This point of 
view is not false, but it is incomplete, and moreover, it is exclu- 
sive. It expresses but one side of truth, and rejects all the others. 
The question is not to decry and recommence the work of our 
predecessors, but to perfect it in reuniting, and in fortifying by 
that reunion, all the truths scattered in the different systems 
which the eighteenth century has transmitted to us. 

Such is the principle to which we have been conducted by two 
years of study upon modern philosophy, from Descartes to our 
times. This principle, badly disengaged at first, we applied for 
the first time within the narrowest limits, and only to theories 
relative to the question of personal existence. 1 We then extended 
it to a greater number of questions and theories; we touched 
the principal points of the intellectual and moral order, 2 and at 
the same time that we were continuing the investigations of our 
illustrious predecessor, M. Koyer-Collard, upon the schools of 
France, England, and Scotland, we commenced the study new 
among us, the difficult but interesting and fecund study, of the 
philosophy of Kcenigsberg. We can at the present time, there- 
fore, embrace all the schools of the eighteenth century, and all 
the problems which they agitated. 

1 1st Series, vol. i., Course of 1816. 
* Ibid., Course of 1817. 
2* 



34 oPEnsrasra discouese. 

Philosophy, in all times, turns upon the fundamental ideas of 
the true, the beautiful, and the good. The idea of the true, phi- 
losophically developed, is psychology, logic, metaphysic ; the 
idea of the good is private and public morals ; the idea of the 
beautiful is that science which, in Germany, is called aesthetics, the 
details of which pertain to the criticism of literature, the criticism 
of arts, but whose general principles have always occupied a more 
or less considerable place in the researches, and even in the teach- 
ing of philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle to Hutcheson and 
Kant. 

Upon these essential points which constitute the entire domain 
of philosophy, we will successively interrogate the principal schools 
of the eighteenth century. 

When we examine them all with attention, we can easily re- 
duce them to two, — one of which, in the analysis of thought, the 
common subject of all their works, gives to sensation an excessive 
part ; the other of which, in this same analysis, going to the op- 
posite extreme, deduces consciousness almost wholly from a fac- 
ulty different from that of sensation — reason. The first of these 
schools is the empirical school, of which the father, or rather the 
wisest representative, is Locke, and Condillac the extreme repre- 
sentative ; the second is the spiritualistic or rationalistic school, 
as it is called, which reckons among its illustrious interpreters 
Reid, who is the most irreproachable, and Kant, who is the most 
systematic. Surely there is truth in these two schools, and truth 
is a good which must be taken wherever one finds it. We will- 
ingly admit, with the empirical school, that the senses have not 
been given us in vain ; that this admirable organization which 
elevates us above all other animate beings, is a rich and varied 
instrument, which it would be folly to neglect. We are con- 
vinced that the spectacle of the world is a permanent source of 
sound and sublime instruction. Upon this point neither Aris- 
totle, nor Bacon, nor Locke, has in us an adversary, but a disciple. 
We acknowledge, or rather we proclaim, that in the analysis of 
human knowledge, it is necessary to assign to the senses an im- 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 35 

portant part. But when the empirical school pretends that all 
that passes beyond the reach of the senses is a chimera, then we 
abandon it, and go over to the opposite school. We profess to 
believe, for example, that, without an agreeable impression, never 
should we have conceived the beautiful, and that, notwithstand- 
ing, the beautiful is not merely the agreeable ; that, thank heaven, 
happiness is usually added to virtue, but that the idea itself of 
virtue is essentially different from that of happiness. On this 
point we are openly of the opinion of Reid and Kant. We have 
also established, and will again establish, that the reason of man 
is in possession of principles which sensation precedes but does 
not explain, and which are directly suggested to us by the power 
of reason alone. We will follow Kant thus far, but not farther. 
Far from following him, we will combat him, when, after having 
victoriously defended the great principles of every kind against 
empiricism, he strikes them with sterility, in pretending that they 
have no value beyond the inclosure of the reason which possesses 
them, condemning also to impotence that same reason which he 
has just elevated so high, and opening the way to a refined and 
learned skepticism which, after all, ends at the same abyss with 
ordinary skepticism. 

You perceive that we shall be by turns with Locke, with Reid, 
and with Kant, in that just and strong measure which is called 
eclecticism. 

Eclecticism is in our eyes the true historical method, and 
it has for us all the importance of the history of philosophy ; 
but there is something which we place above the history of 
philosophy, and, consequently, above eclecticism, — philosophy 
itself. 

The history of philosophy does not carry its own light with it, 
it is not its own end. How could eclecticism, which has no other 
field than history, be our only, our primary, object ? 

It is, doubtless, just, it is of the highest utility, to discriminate 
in each system what there is true in it from what there is false 
in it ; first, in order to appreciate this system rightly ; then, in 



36 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

order to render the false of no account, to disengage and re-collect 
the true, and thus to enrich and aggrandize philosophy by history. 
But you conceive that we must already know what truth is, in 
order to recognize it, and to distinguish it from the error with 
which it is mixed ; so that the criticism of systems almost de- 
mands a system, so that the history of philosophy is constrained 
to first borrow from philosophy the light which it must one day 
return to it with usury. 

In fine, the history of philosophy is only a branch, or rather an 
instrument, of philosophical science. Surely it is the interest 
which we feel for philosophy that alone attaches us to its history ; 
it is the love of truth which makes us everywhere pursue its ves- 
tiges, and interrogate with a passionate curiosity those who before 
us have also loved and sought truth. 

Thus philosophy is at once the supreme object and the torch 
of the history of philosophy. By this double title it has a right 
to preside over our instruction. 

In regard to this, one word of explanation, I beg you. 

He who is speaking before you to-day is, it is true, officially 
charged only with the course of the history of philosophy ; in that 
is our task, and in that, once more, our guide shall be eclecticism. 1 
But, we confess, if philosophy has not the right to present itself 
here in some sort on the first plan; if it should appear only 
behind its history, it in reality holds dominion ; and to it all our 
wishes, as well as all our efforts, are related. We hold, doubtless, in 
great esteem, both Brucker and Tennemann, 2 so wise, so judicious ; 
nevertheless our models, our veritable masters, always present to 
our thought, are, in antiquity, Plato and Socrates, among the 
moderns, Descartes, and, why should I hesitate to say it, among 



1 On the legitimate employment and the imperative conditions of eclecticism, 
see 3d Series, Fragments Phil-osophiques, vol. iv., preface of the first edition, 
p. 41, &c, especially the article entitled De la Philosophic en Belgiqve, pp. 
228 and 229. 

3 We have translated his excellent Manual of the History of Philosophy. 
See the second edition, vol. ii., 8vo., 1839. 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 37 

us, and in our times, the illustrious man who has been pleased to 
call us to this chair. M. Royer-Collard was also only a professor 
of the history of philosophy ; but he rightly pretended to have 
an opinion in philosophy ; he served a cause which he has trans- 
mitted to us, and we will serve it in our turn. 

This great cause is known to you ; it is that of a sound and 
generous philosophy, worthy of our century by the severity of its 
methods, and answering to the immortal wants of humanity, 
setting out modestly from psychology, from the humble study of 
the human mind, in order to elevate itself to the highest regions, 
and to traverse metaphysics, aesthetics, theodicea, morals, and 
politics. 

Our enterprise is not then simply to renew the histoiy of 
philosophy by eclecticism ; we also wish, we especially wish, 
and history well understood, thanks to eclecticism, will therein 
powerfully assist us, to deduce from the study of systems, 
their strifes, and even their ruins, a system which may be 
proof against criticism, and which can be accepted by your 
reason, and also by your heart, noble youth of the nineteenth 
century ! 

In order to fulfil this great object, which is our veritable mission 
to you, we shall dare this year, for the first and for the last time, 
to go beyond the narrow limits which are imposed upon us. In 
the history of the philosophy of the eighteenth century, we have 
resolved to leave a little in the shade the history of philosophy, 
in order to make philosophy itself appear, and while exhibiting 
to you the distinctive traits of the principal doctrines of the last 
century, to expose to you the doctrine which seems to us adapted 
to the wants and to the spirit of our times, and still, to explain it 
to you briefly, but in its full extent, instead of dwelling upon some 
one of its parts, as hitherto we have done. With years we will cor- 
rect, we will task ourselves to aggrandize and elevate our work. 
To-day we present it you very imperfect still, but established upon 
foundations which we believe solid, and already stamped with a 
character that will not change. 



38 OPENING DISCOURSE. 

You will here see, then, brought together in a short space, our 
principles, our processes, our results. We ardently desire to 
recommend them to you, young men, who are the hope of 
science as well as of your country. May we at least be able, in 
the vast career which we have to run, to meet in you the same 
kindness which hitherto has sustained us. 



PART FIRST 



THE TRUE. 



LECTURE I. 

THE EXISTENCE OF TJNIXERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES. 

Two great -wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute truths that 
may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is the problem of the 
philosophy of our time. — Universal and necessary principles. — Examples 
of different kinds of such principles. — Distinction between universal and 
necessary principles and general principles. — Experience alone is inca- 
pable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and also incapable 
of dispensing "with them in order to arrive at the knowledge of the sensible 
world. — Eeason as being that faculty of ours which discovers to us these 
principles. — The study of universal and necessary principles introduces 
us to the highest parts of philosophy. 

To-day, as in all time, two great wants are felt by man. The 
first, the most imperious, is that of fixed, immutable principles, 
which depend upon neither times nor places nor circumstances, 
and on which the mind reposes with an unbounded confidence. In 
all investigations, as long as we have seized only isolated, discon- 
nected facts, as long as we have not referred them to a general 
law, we possess the materials of science, but there is yet no science. 
Even physics commence only when universal truths appear, to 
which all the facts of the same order that observation discovers to 
us in nature may be referred. Plato has said, that there is no 
science of the transitory. 

This is our first need. But there is another, not less legitimate, 
the need of not being the dupe of chimerical principles, of barren 
abstractions, of combinations more or less ingenious, but artificial, 



40 LECTURE FIRST. 

the need of resting upon reality and life, the need of experience. 
The physical and natural sciences, whose regular and rapid con- 
quests strike and dazzle the most ignorant, owe their progress to 
the experimental method. Hence the immense popularity of this 
method, which is carried to such an extent that one would not now 
condescend to lend the least attention to a science over which this 
method should not seem to preside. 

To unite observation and reason, not to lose sight of the ideal 
of science to which man aspires, and to search for it and find it 
by the route of experience, — such is the problem of philosophy. 

Now we address ourselves to your recollections of the last two 
years : — have we not established, by the severest experimental 
method, by reflection applied to the study of the human mind, with 
the deliberation and the rigor which such demonstrations exact, 
— have we not established that there are in all men, without dis- 
tinction, in the wise and the ignorant, ideas, notions, beliefs, prin- 
ciples which the most determined skeptic cannot in the slightest 
degree deny, by which he is unconsciously, and in spite of himself, 
governed both in his words and actions, and which, by a striking 
contrast with our other knowledges, are marked with the at once 
marvellous and incontestable character, that they are encountered 
in the most common experience, and that, at the same time, instead 
of being circumscribed within the limits of this experience, they 
surpass and govern it, universal in the midst of particular phe- 
nomena to which they are applied ; necessary, although mingled 
with things contingent ; to our eyes infinite and absolute, even 
while appearing within us in that relative and finite being which 
we are ? It is not an unpremeditated paradox that we present to 
you ; we are only expressing here the result of numerous lectures. 1 

It was not difficult for us to show that there are universal and 
necessary principles at the head of all sciences. 

It is very evident that there are no mathematics without axioms 
and definitions, that is to say, without absolute principles. 

1 1st Series of our Course, vol. i. 



THE EXISTENCE OF PEENXEPLES. 11 

What would logic become, those mathematics of thought, it 
vou should take away from it a certain number of principles, 
which are a little barbarous, perhaps, in their scholastic form, but 
must be universal and necessary in order to preside over all rea- 
soning and every demonstration ! 

Are physics possible, if every phenomenon which begins to 
appear does not suppose a cause and a law ! 

Without the principle of final causes, could physiology proceed 
a single step, render to itself an account of a single organ, or 
determine a single function ] 

Is not the principle on which the whole of morals rests, the 
principle which obligates man to good and lays the foundation 
of virtue, oi the same nature ! Does it not extend to all moral 
beings, without distinction of time and place \ Can you conceive 
of a moral being who does not recognize in the depth of his con- 
science that reason ought to govern passion, that it is necessary to 
preserve sworn faith, and, against the most pressing interest, to 
restore the treasure that has been confided to us ; ; 

And these are not mere metaphysical prejudices and formulas 
of the schools : I appeal to the most vulgar common sense. 

If I should say to you that a murder has just been committed, 
could you not ask me when, where, by whom, wherefore \ That 
is to say, your mind is directed by the universal and necessary 
principles of time, of space, of cause, and even of final cause. 

If I should say to you that love or ambition caused the mur- 
der, would you not at the same instant conceive a lover, an am- 
bitious person '■ This means, again, that there is for you no act 
without an agent, no quality and phenomenon without a substance, 
without a real subject. 

If I should say to you that the accused pretends that he is not 
the same person who conceived, willed, and executed this murder, 
and that, at intervals, his personality has more than once been 
changed, would you not say he is a fool if he is sincere, and that, 
although the acts and the incidents have varied, the person and 
the being have remained the same ? 



42 LECTURE FIRST. 

Suppose that the accused should defend himself on this ground, 
that the murder must serve his interest ; that, moreover, the per- 
son killed was so unhappy that life was a burden to him ; that 
the state loses nothing, since in place of two worthless citizens it 
acquires one who becomes useful to it ; that, in fine, mankind will 
not perish by the loss of an individual, &c. ; to all these reason- 
ings would you not oppose the very simple response, that this 
murder, useful perhaps to its author, is not the less unjust, and 
that, therefore, under no pretext was it permitted ? 

The same good sense which admits universal and necessary 
truths, easily distinguishes them from those that are not universal 
and necessary, and are only general, that is to say, are applied 
only to a greater or less number of cases. 

For example, the following is a very general truth : the day 
succeeds the night ; but is it a universal and necessary truth ? 
Does it extend to all lands ? Yes, to all known lands. But does 
it extend to all possible lands ? No ; for it is possible to con- 
ceive of lands plunged in eternal night, another system of the 
world being given. The laws of the material world are what 
they are; they are not necessary. Their Author might have 
chosen others. With another system of the world one conceives 
other physics, but we cannot conceive other mathematics and 
other morals. Thus it is possible to conceive that day and night 
may not be in the same relation to each as that in which we see 
them ; therefore the truth that day succeeds night is a very 
general truth, perhaps even a universal truth, but by no means a 
necessary truth. 

Montesquieu has said that liberty is not a fruit of warm cli- 
mates. I acknowledge, if it is desired, that heat enervates the 
spirit, and that warm countries maintain free governments with 
difficulty ; but it does not follow that there may be no possible 
exception to this principle : moreover, there have been excep- 
tions ; hence it is not an absolutely universal principle, much less 
is it a necessary principle. Could you say as much of the prin- 
ciple of cause ? Could you in any way conceive, in any time 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES. 43 

and in any place, a phenomenon which begins to appear without 
a cause, physical or moral ? 

And were it possible to reduce universal and necessary princi- 
ples to general principles, in order to employ and apply these 
principles thus abased, and to found upon them any reasoning 
whatever, it would be necessary to admit what is called in logic 
the principle of contradiction, viz., that a thing cannot at the 
same time be and not be, in order to maintain the integrity of 
each part of the reasoning ; as well as the principle of sufficient 
reason, which alone establishes their connection and the legiti- 
macy of the conclusion. Now, these two principles, without 
which there is no reasoning, are themselves universal and neces- 
sary principles ; so that the circle is manifest. 

Even were we to destroy in thought all existences, save that of 
a single mind, we should be compelled to place in that mind, in 
order that it might exercise itself at all — and the mind is such 
only on the condition that it thinks — several necessary principles ; 
it would be beyond the power of thought to conceive it deprived 
of the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient 
reason. 

How many times have we demonstrated the vanity of the 
efforts of the empirical school to disturb the existence or weaken 
the bearing of universal and necessary principles ! Listen to this 
school : it will say to you that the principle of cause, given by 
us as universal and necessary, is, after all, only a habit of the 
mind, which, seeing in nature a fact succeeding another fact, puts 
between these that connection which we have called the relation 
of effect to cause. This explanation is nothing but the destruc- 
tion, not only of the principle of causality, but even of the notion 
of cause. The senses show me two balls, one of which begins to 
move, the other of which moves after it. Suppose that this suc- 
cession is renewed and continues ; it will be constancy added to 
succession ; it will by no means be the connection of a causative 
power with its effect ; for example, that which consciousness at- 
tests to us is the least effort of volition. Thus a consequent em- 



44 LECTURE FIEST. 

pirist, like Hume, 1 easily proves that no sensible experience 
legitimately gives the idea of cause. 

What we say of the notion of cause we might say of all notions 
of the same kind. Let us at least instance those of substance 
and unity. 

The senses perceive only qualities, jmenomena. I touch the 
extension, I see the color, I am sensible of the odor ; but do our 
senses attain the substance that is extended, colored, or odorous ? 
On this point Hume 2 indulges in pleasantries. He asks which 
one of our senses takes cognizance of substance. What, then, 
according to him and in the system of empiricism, is the notion 
of substance ? An illusion like the notion of cause. 

Neither do the senses give us unity ; for unity is identity, is 
simplicity, and the senses show us every thing in succession and 
composition. The works of art possess unity only because Art, 
that is to say, the mind of man puts it there. If we perceive 
unity in the works of nature, it is not the senses that discover it 
to us. The arrangement of the different parts of an object may 
contain unity, but it is a unity of organization, an ideal and 
moral unity which the mind alone conceives, and which escapes 
the senses. 

If the senses are not able to explain simple notions, much less 
still are they able to explain the principles in which these notions 
are met, which are universal and necessary. In fact, the senses 
clearly perceive such and such facts, but it is impossible for them 
to embrace what is universal ; experience attests what is, it does 
not reach what cannot but be. 

We go farther. Not only is empiricism unable to explain uni- 
versal and necessary principles ; but we maintain that, without 
these principles, empiricism cannot even account for the knowl- 
edge of the sensible world. 

Take away the principle of causality, and the human mind is 
condemned never to go out of itself and its own modifications. 

1 1st Series, vol. i. 2 Ibid. 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES. 45 

All the sensations of hearing, of smell, of taste, of touch, of feel- 
ing even, cannot inform you what their cause is, nor whether 
they have a cause. But give to the human mind the principle 
of causality, admit that every sensation, as well as every phenom- 
enon, every change, every event, has a cause, as evidently we are 
not the cause of certain sensations, and that especially these sen- 
sations must have a cause, and we are naturally led to recognize 
for those sensations causes different from ourselves, and that is 
the first notion of an exterior world. The universal and neces- 
sary principle of causality alone gives it and justifies it. Other 
principles of the same order increase and develop it. 

As soon as you know that there are external objects, I ask you 
whether you do not conceive them in a place that contains them. 
In order to deny it, it would be necessary to deny that every body 
is in a place, that is to say, to reject a truth of physics, which is 
at the same time a principle of metaphysics, as well as an axiom 
of common sense. But the place that contains a body is often 
itself a body, which is only more capacious than the first. This 
new body is in its turn in a place. Is this new place also a body ? 
Then it is contained in another place more extended, and so on ; 
so that it is impossible for you to conceive a body which is not 
in a place ; and you arrive at the conception of a boundless and 
infinite place, that contains all limited places and all possible 
bodies : that boundless and infinite place is space. 

And I tell you in this nothing that is not very simple. Look. 
Do you deny that this water is in a vase ? Do you deny that this 
vase is in this hall ? Do you deny that this hall is in a larger 
place, which is in its turn in another larger still ? I can thus carry 
you on to infinite space. If you deny a single one of these pro- 
positions, you deny all, the first as well as the last ; and if you 
admit the first, you are forced to admit the last. 

It cannot be supposed that sensibility, which is not able to 
give us even the idea of body, alone elevates us to the idea of 
space. The intervention of a superior principle is, therefore, here 
necessary. 



46 LECTURE FIRST. 

As we believe that every body is contained in a place, so we 
believe that every event happens in time. Can you conceive an 
event happening, except in some point of duration ? This dura- 
tion is extended and successively increased to your mind's eye, 
and you end by conceiving it unlimited like space. Deny dura- 
tion, and you deny all the sciences that measure it, you destroy 
all the natural beliefs upon which human life reposes. It is hardly 
necessary to add that sensibility alone no more explains the notion 
of time than that of space, both of which are nevertheless inhe- 
rent in the knowledge of the external world. 

Empiricism is, therefore, convicted of being unable to dispense 
with universal and necessary principles, and of being unable to 
explain them. 

Let us pause : either all our preceding works have terminated 
in nothing but chimeras, or they permit us to consider as a point 
definitely acquired for science, that there are in the human mind, 
for whomsoever interrogates it sincerely, principles really stamped 
with the character of universality and necessity. 

After having established and defended the existence of univer- 
sal and necessary principles, we might investigate and pursue this 
kind of principles in all the departments of human knowledge, 
and attempt an exact and rigorous classification ; but illustrious 
examples have taught us to fear to compromise truths of the 
greatest price by mixing with them conjectures which, in giving 
brilliancy, perhaps, to the spirit of philosophy, diminish its author- 
ity in the eyes of the wise. We, also, following the example of 
Kant, attempted before you, last year, 1 a classification, even a re- 
duction of universal and necessary principles, and of all the notions 
that are connected with them. This work has not lost for us its 
importance, but we will not reproduce it. In the interest of the 
great cause which we serve, and taking thought here only to estab- 
li>li upon solid foundations the doctrine which is adapted to the 
French genius in the nineteenth century, we will carefully shun 

1 1st Scries, vol. i., Fragments of the Course of 1817. 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRIXCIPLES. 47 

every thing that might seem personal and hazardous ; and, instead 
of examining, criticising, 1 and reconstituting the classification 
which the philosophy of Kcenigsberg has given of universal and 
necessary principles, we prefer, we find it much more useful, to 
enable you to penetrate deeper into the nature of these principles, 
by showing you what faculty of ours it is that discovers them to 
us, and to which they are related and correspond. 

The peculiarity of these principles is, that each one of us in 
reflection recognizes that he possesses them, but that he is not their 
author. We conceive them and apply them, we do not constitute 
them. Let us interrogate our consciousness. Do we refer to our- 
selves, for example, the definitions of geometry, as we do certain 
movements of which we feel ourselves to be the cause ? If it is 
I who make these definitions, they are therefore mine, I can un- 
make them, modify them, change them, even annihilate them. 
It is certain that I cannot do it. I am not, then, the author of 
them. It has also been demonstrated that the principles of which 
we have spoken cannot be derived from sensation, which is varia- 
ble, limited, incapable of producing and authorizing any thing 
universal and necessary. I arrive, then, at the following conse- 
quence, also necessary : — truth is in me and not by me. As 
sensibility puts me in relation with the physical world, so another 
faculty puts me in communication with the truths that depend 
upon neither the world nor me, and that faculty is reason. 

There are in men three general faculties which are always 
mingled together, and are rarely exercised except simultaneously, 
but which analysis divides in order to study them better, without 
misconceiving their reciprocal play, their intimate connection, their 
indivisible unity. The first of these faculties is activity, voluntary 
and free activity, in which human personality especially appears, 
and without which the other faculties would be as if they were 
not, since we should not exist for ourselves. Let us examine 
ourselves at the moment when a sensation is produced in us ; we 

1 See that criticism, 1st Series, vol. v., Kant, lecture 8. 



48 LECTURE FIEST. 

shall recognize that there is perception only so far as there is some 
degree of attention, and that perception ends at the moment when 
our activity ends. One does not recollect what he did in perfect 
sleep or in a swoon ; because then he had lost voluntary activity, 
consequently consciousness ; consequently, again, memory. Pas- 
sion often, in depriving us of liberty, deprives us, at the same 
time, of the consciousness of our actions and of ourselves ; then, 
to use a just and common expression, one knows not what he 
does. It is by liberty that man is truly man, that he possesses 
himself and governs himself; without it, he falls again under the 
yoke of nature ; he is, without it, only a more admirable and 
more beautiful part of nature. But while I am endowed with 
activity and liberty, I am also passive in other respects ; I am 
subject to the laws of the external world ; I suffer and I enjoy 
without being myself the author of my joys and my sufferings ; 
I feel rising within me needs, desires, passions, which I have 
not made, which by turns fill my life with happiness and 
misery. Finally, besides volition and sensibility, man has the 
faculty of knowing, lias understanding, intelligence, reason, the 
name matters little, by means of which he is elevated to truths of 
different orders, and among others, to universal and necessary 
truths, which suppose in reason, attached to its exercise, princi- 
ples entirely distinct from the impressions of the senses and the 
resolutions of the will. 1 

Voluntary activity, sensibility, reason, are all equally certain. 
Consciousness verifies the existence of necessary principles, which 
direct the reason quite as well as that of sensations and volitions. 
I call every thing real that falls under observation. I suffer; my 

1 This classification of the human faculties, save some differences more 
nominal than real, is now generally adopted, and makes the foundation of 
the psychology of our times. Sec our writings, among others, 1st Series, 
Course of 181G, lectures 23 and 24: Siatoire <kt moi ; ibid., Pes falts de Con- 
science ; vol. iii., lecture 3, Emmen de la Theorie des Facult s dans Oondlllac ; 
vol. iv., lecture 21, des Facultes scion Reid ; vol. v., lecture 8, Ecamen de la 
Theorie de Kant ; 3d Scries, vol iv., Preface de la Premie re Edition, Ecamen 
des Lemons de M. Laromiguiere, Introduction aux (Euvres de M. de Biran, etc. 



THE EXISTENCE OF PRINCIPLES. 49 

suffering is real, inasmuch as I am conscious of it : it is the same 
with liberty : it is the same with reason and the principles that 
govern it. We can affirm, then, that the existence of universal 
and necessary principles rests upon the testimony of observation, 
and even of the most immediate and surest observation, that of 
consciousness. 

But consciousness is only a witness, — it makes what is appear ; 
it creates nothing. It is not because consciousness announces it 
to you, that you have produced such or such a movement, that you 
have experienced such or such an impression. Neither is it because 
consciousness says to us that reason is constrained to admit such 
or such a truth, that this truth exists ; it is because it exists that 
it is impossible for reason not to admit it. The truths that reason 
attains by the aid of universal and necessary principles with which 
it is provided, are absolute truths ; reason does not create them, 
it discovers them. Reason is not the judge of its own principles, 
and cannot account for them, for it only judges by them, and 
they are to it its own laws. Much less does consciousness make 
these principles, or the truths which they reveal to us ; for con- 
sciousness has no other office, no other power than in some sort 
to serve as a mirror for reason. Absolute truths are, therefore, 
independent of experience and consciousness, and at the same 
time, they are attested by experience and consciousness. On the 
one hand, these truths declare themselves in experience ; on the 
other, no experience explains them. Behold how experience and 
reason differ and agree, and how, by means of experience, we 
come to find something which surpasses it. 

So the philosophy which we teach rests neither upon hypo- 
thetical principles, nor upon empirical principles. It is observation 
itself, but observation applied to the higher portion of our knowl- 
edge, which furnishes us with the principles that we seek, with a 
point of departure at once solid and elevated. 1 



1 This lecture on the existence of universal and necessary principles, which 
as easily comprehended, in 1818, by an auditory to which long discussions 

3 



50 LECTURE FIRST. 

This point of departure we have found, and we do not abandon 
it. We remain immovably attached to it. The study of uni- 
versal and necessary principles, considered under their different 
aspects, and in the great problems which they solve, is almost 
the whole of philosophy ; it fills it, measures it, divides it. If 
psychology is the regular study of the human mind and its laws, 
it is evident that that of universal and necessary principles which 
preside over the exercise of reason, is the especial domain of psy- 
chology, which in Germany is called rational psychology, and is 
very different from empirical psychology. Since logic is the 
examination of the value and the legitimacy of our different means 
of knowing, its most important employment must be to estimate 
the value and the legitimacy of the principles which are the foun- 
dations of our most important cognitions. In fine, the meditation 
of these same principles conducts us to theodicea, and opens to 
us the sanctuary of philosophy, if we would ascend to their true 
source, to that sovereign reason which is the first and last expla- 
nation of our own. 



had already been presented during the two previous years, appearing here 
without the support of these preliminaries, will not perhaps be entirely satis- 
factory to the reader. We beseech him to consult carefully the first volume 
of the 1st Series of our Course, which contains an abridgment, at least, of 
the numerous lectures of 1816 and 1817, of which this is a resume; especially 
to read in the third, fourth, and fifth volumes of.the 1st Series, the developed 
analyses, in which, under different forms, universal and necessary principles 
are demonstrated as far as maybe, and in the third volume of the 2d Series, 
the lectures devoted to establish against Locke the same principles. 



* "\. 



LECTUKE II. 

ORIGIN OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES. 

Resume of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the origin of 
universal and necessary principles. — Danger of this question, and its ne- 
cessity. — Different forms under which truth presents itself to us, and the 
successive order of these forms : theory of spontaneity and reflection. — 
The primitive form of principles ; abstraction that disengages them from 
that form, and gives them their actual form. — Examination and refutation 
of the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an induc- 
tion founded on particular notions. 

We may regard as a certain conquest of the experimental 
method and of true psychological analysis, the establishment of 
principles which at the same time that they are given to us by 
the surest of all experiences, that of consciousness, have a bearing 
superior to experience, and open to us regions inaccessible to 
empiricism. We have recognized such principles at the head of 
nearly all the sciences ; then, searching among our different facul- 
ties for that which may have given them to us, we have ascer- 
tained that it is impossible to refer them to any other faculty 
than to that general faculty of knowing which w 7 e call reason, 
veiy different from reasoning, to which it furnishes its laws. 

That is the point at which we have arrived. But is it possible 
to stop there ? 

In human intelligence, as it is now developed, universal and 
necessary principles are offered to us under forms in some sort 
consecrated. The principle of causality, for example, is thus 
enounced to us : — Every thing that begins to appear necessarily 
has a cause. Other principles have this same axiomatic form. 
But have they always had it, and did they spring from the 



52 LECTUKE SECOND. 

human mind with this logical and scholastic apparel, as Minerva 
sprang all armed from the head of Jupiter ? With what charac- 
ters did they show themselves at first, before taking those in which 
they are now clothed, and which can scarcely be their primitive 
characters ? In a word, is it possible to find the origin of uni- 
versal and necessary principles, and the route which they must 
have followed in order to arrive at what they are to-day ? A 
new problem, the importance of which it is easy to feel ; for, if it 
can be resolved, what light will be shed upon these principles ! 
On the other hand, what difficulties must be encountered ! How 
can we penetrate to the sources of human knowledge, which are 
concealed, like those of the Nile ? Is it not to be feared that, in 
plunging into the obscure past, instead of truth, one may encoun- 
ter an hypothesis ; that, attaching himself, then, to this hypothesis, 
he may transport it from the past to the present, and that, being 
deceived in regard to the origin of principles, he may be led to 
misconceive their actual and certain characters, or, at least, to 
mutilate and enfeeble those which the adopted origin would not 
easily explain ? This danger is so great, this rock is so celebrated 
in shipwrecks, that before braving it one should know how to 
take many precautions against the seductions of the spirit of the 
system. It is even conceived that great philosophers, who were 
timid in no place, have suppressed the perilous problem. In feet, 
by undertaking to grapple with this problem at first, Locke and 
Condillac went far astray, 1 and it must be said, corrupted all phi- 
losophy at its source. The empirical school, which lauds the 
experimental method so much, turns its back upon it, thus to 
speak, when, instead of commencing by the study of the actual 
characters of our cognitions, as they are attested to us by con- 
sciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without 
guidance, into the pursuit of their origin. Reid 2 and Kant 3 
showed themselves much more observing by confining themselves 



First Scries, vol. iv., lectures 1, 2, and 3. 

Ibid., vol. iv., etc. 3 1 'bid., vol. v., lecture 8. 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 53 

within the limits of the present, through fear of losing themselves 
in the darkness of the past. Both freely treat of universal and 
necessary principles in the form which they now have, without 
asking what was their primitive form. We much prefer this 
wise circumspection to the adventurous spirit of the empirical 
school. Nevertheless, when a problem is given out, so long as it 
is not solved, it troubles and besets the human mind. Philoso- 
phy ought not to shun it then, but its duty is to approach it only 
with extreme prudence and a severe method. 

We cannot recollect too well, for the sake of others and our- 
selves, that the primitive state of human cognitions is remote 
from us ; we can scarcely bring it within the reach of our vision 
and submit it to observation ; the actual state, on the contrary, 
is always at our disposal : it is sufficient for us to enter into our- 
selves, to fathom consciousness by reflection, and make it give 
up what it contains. Setting out from certain facts, we shall not 
be liable to wander subsequently into hypotheses, or if, in ascend- 
ing to the primitive state, we fall into any error, we shall be able 
to perceive it and repair it by the aid of the truth which an im- 
partial observation shall have given us ; every origin which shall 
not legitimately end at the point where we are, is by that alone 
convicted of being false, and will deserve to be discarded. 1 

You know that a large portion of the last year was spent upon 
this question. We took, one by one, universal and necessary 
questions submitted to our examination, in order to determine 



1 We have everywhere called to mind, maintained, and confirmed by the 
errors of those who have dared to break it, this rule of true psychological 
analysis, that, before passing to the question of the origin of an idea, a no- 
tion, a belief, any principle whatever, the actual characters of this idea, this 
notion, this belief, this principle, must have been a long time studied and 
well established, with the firm resolution of not altering them under any 
pretext whatever^in wishing to explain them. We believe that we have, as 
Leibnitz says, settled this point. See 1st Series, vol. i., Programme of the 
Course of 1817, and the Opening Discourse; vol. iii., lecture 1, Locke; lec- 
ture 2, Condillac ; lecture 3, almost entire, and lecture 8, p. 260 ; 2d Series, 
vol. iii., Examen du Systeme de Locke, lecture 16, p. 77—87 ; 8d Series, vol. 
iv., Examination of the Lectures of M. Loremquiere, p. 268. 



54 LECTURE SECOND. 

the origin of each one of them, its primitive form, and the dif- 
ferent forms which have successively clothed it ; only after hav- 
ing operated thus upon a sufficiently large number of principles, 
did we come slowly to a general conclusion, and that conclusion 
we believe ourselves entitled to express here briefly as the solid 
result of a most circumspect analysis, and, at least, a most 
methodical labor. We must either renew before you this labor, 
this analysis, and thereby run the risk of not being able to com- 
plete the long course that we have marked out for ourselves, or 
we must limit ourselves to reminding you of the essential traits 
of the theory at which we arrived. 

This theory, moreover, is in itself so simple, that, without the 
dress of regular demonstrations upon which it is founded, its own 
evidence will sufficiently establish it. It wholly rests upon the 
distinction between the different forms under which truth is pre- 
sented to us. It is, in its somewhat arid generality, as follows : 

1st. One can perceive truth in two different ways. Sometimes 
one perceives it in such or such a particular circumstance. For 
example, in presence of two apples or two stones, and of two 
other similar objects placed by the side of the first, I perceive this 
truth with absolute certainty, viz., that these two stones and 
these two other stones make four stones, — which is in some sort 
a concrete apperception of the truth, because the truth is given 
to us in regard to real and determinate objects. Sometimes I 
also affirm in a general manner that two and two equal four, 
abstracting every determinate object, — which is the abstract con- 
ception of truth. 

Now, of these two ways of knowing truth, which precedes in 
the chronological order of human knowledge ? Is it not certain, 
may it not be avowed by every one, that the particular precedes 
the general, that the concrete precedes the abstract, that we begin 
by perceiving such or such a determinate truth, in such or such 
a case, at such or such a moment, in such or such a place, before 
conceiving a general truth, independently of every application 
and different circumstances of place and time ? 



THE ORIGIN" OF PRINCIPLES. 55 

2d. We can perceive the same truth without asking ourselves 
this question : Have we the ability not to admit this truth ? We 
perceive it, then, by virtue alone of the intelligence which has 
been given us, and which enters spontaneously into exercise ; or 
rather, we try to doubt the truth which we perceive, we attempt 
to deny it ; we are not able to do it, and then it is presented to 
reflection as superior to all possible negation ; it appears to us no 
longer only as a truth, but as a necessary truth. 

Is it not also evident, that we do not begin by reflection, that 
reflection supposes an anterior operation, and that this operation, 
in order not to be oae of reflection, and not to suppose another 
before it, must be entirely spontaneous ; that thus the spontaneous 
and instinctive intuition of truth precedes its reflection and neces- 
sary conception % 

Reflection is a progress more or less tardy in the individual 
and in the race. It is, par excellence, the philosophic faculty ; it 
sometimes engenders doubt and skepticism, sometimes convictions 
that, for being rational, are only the more profound. It con- 
structs systems, it creates artificial logic, and all those formulas 
which we now use by the force of habit as if they were natural 
to us. But spontaneous intuition is the true logic of nature. It 
presides over the acquisition of nearly all our cognitions. Chil- 
dren, the people, three-fourths of the human race never pass be- 
yond it, and rest there with boundless security. 

The question of the origin of human cognitions is thus re- 
solved for us in the simplest manner : it is enough for us to de- 
termine that operation of the mind which precedes all others, 
without which no other would take place, and which is the first 
exercise, and the first form of our faculty of knowing. 1 

1 This theory of spontaneity and of reflection, which in our view is the 
key to so many difficulties, continually recurs in our works. One may see, 
vol. i. of the 1st Series, in a programme of the Course of 1817, and in a frag- 
ment entitled De la Spontaneite et de la Reflexion; vol. iv. of the same Scries, 
Examination of Eeid's Philosophy, passim ; vol. v., Examination of Kant's 
System, lecture 8 ; 2d Series, vol. i., passim; vol. iii., Lectures on Judg- 
ment ; 3d Series, Fragments PMlosophiques, vol. iv., preface of the first edi- 



56 LECTURE SECOND. 

Since every thing that bears the character of reflection cannot 
be primitive, and supposes an anterior state, it follows, that the 
principles which are the subject of our study could not have 
possessed at first the reflective and abstract character with which 
they are now marked, that they must have shown themselves at 
their origin in some particular circumstance, under a concrete and 
determinate form, and that in time they were disengaged from 
this form, in order to be invested with their actual, abstract, and 
universal form. These are the two ends of the chain ; it remains 
for us to seek how the human mind has been from one to the 
other, from the primitive state to the actual state, from the con- 
crete state to the abstract state. 

How can we go from the concrete to the abstract ? Evidently 
by that well-known operation which is called abstraction. Thus 
far, nothing is more simple. But it is necessary to discriminate 
between two sorts of abstractions. 

In presence of several particular objects, you omit the charac- 
ters which distinguish them, and separately consider a character 
which is common to them all — you abstract this character. 
Examine the nature and conditions of this abstraction ; it pro- 
ceeds by means of comparison, and it is founded on a certain 
number of particular and different cases. Take an example : 
examine how we form the abstract and general idea of color. 
Place before my eyes for the first time a white object. Can I 
here at the first step immediately arrive at a general idea of 
color ? Can I at first place on one side the whiteness, and on 
the other side the color ? Analyze what passes within you. 
You experience a sensation of whiteness. Omit the individuality 
of this sensation, and you wholly destroy it ; you cannot neglect 
the whiteness, and preserve or abstract the color ; for, a single 
color being given, which is a white color, if you take away that, 



tion, p. 37, etc. ; it will be found in different lectures of this volume, among 
others, in the third, On the value of Universal and Necessary Principles ; in 
the fifth, On Mysticism ; and in the eleventh, Primary Data of Common 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 57 

there remains to you absolutely nothing in regard to color. Let 
a blue object succeed this white object, then a red object, etc. ; 
having sensations differing from each other, you can neglect their 
differences, and only consider what they have in common, that 
they are sensations of sight, that is to say, colors, and you thus 
obtain the abstract and general idea of color. Take another ex- 
ample : if you had never smelled but a single flower, the violet, 
for instance, would you have had the idea of odor in general ? 
No. The odor of the violet would be for you the only odor, 
beyond which you would not seek, you could not even imagine 
another. But if to the odor of the violet is added that of the 
rose, and other different odors, in a greater or less number, pro- 
vided there be several, and a comparison be possible, and conse- 
quently, knowledge of their differences and their resemblances, 
then you will be able to form the general idea of odor. What 
is there in common between the odor of one flower and that of 
another flower, except that they have been smelled by aid of the 
same organ, and by the same person ? What here renders gen- 
eralization possible, is the unity of the sentient subject which re- 
members having been modified, while remaining the same, by 
different sensations; now, this subject- can feel itself identical 
under different modifications, and it can conceive in the qualities 
of the object felt some resemblance and some dissimilarity, only 
on the condition of a certain number of sensations experienced, 
of odors smelled. In that case, but in that case alone, there can 
be comparison, abstraction, and generalization, because there are 
different and similar elements. 

In order to arrive at the abstract form of universal and neces- 
sary principles, we have no need of all this labor. Let us take 
again, for example, the principle of cause. If you suppose six 
particular cases from which you have abstracted this principle, it 
will contain neither more nor less ideas than if you had deduced 
it from a single one. To be able to say that the event which I 
see must have a cause, it is not indispensable to have seen several 
events succeed each other. The principle which compels me to 

3* 



58 LECTURE SECOND. 

pronounce this judgment, is already complete in the first as in 
the last event ; it can change in respect to its object, it cannot 
change in itself; it neither increases nor decreases with the 
greater or less number of its applications. The only difference 
that it is subject to in regard to us, is, that we apply it whether 
we remark it or not, whether we disengage it or not from its 
particular application. The question is not to eliminate the par- 
ticularity of the phenomenon, wherein it appears to us, whether 
it be the fall of a leaf or the murder of a man, in order imme- 
diately to conceive, in a general and abstract manner, the neces- 
sity of a cause for every thing that begins to exist. Here, it is 
not because I have been the same, or have been affected in the 
same manner in several different cases, that I have come to this 
general and abstract conception. A leaf falls : at the same in- 
stant I think, I believe, I declare that this falling of the leaf must 
have a cause. A man has been killed : at the same instant I 
believe, I proclaim that this death must have a cause. Each one 
of these facts contains particular and variable circumstances, and 
something universal and necessary, to wit, both of them cannot 
but have a cause. Now, I am perfectly able to disengage the 
universal from the particular, in regard to the first fact as well as 
in regard to the second fact, for the universal is in the first quite 
as well as in the second. In fact, if the principle of causality is 
not universal in the first fact, neither will it be in the second, nor 
in the third, nor in a thousandth ; for a thousand are not nearer 
than one to the infinite, to absolute universality. It is the same, 
and still more evidently, with necessity. Pay particular attention 
to this point : if necessity is not in the first fact, it cannot be in 
any ; for necessity cannot be formed little by little, and by suc- 
cessive increment. If, at the first murder that I see, I do not 
exclaim that this murder necessarily has a cause, at the thousandth 
murder, although it shall have been proved that all the others 
have had causes, I shall have the right to think that this new 
murder has, very probably, also its cause ; but I shall never have 
the right to declare that it necessarily has a cause. But when 



THE ORIGIN- OF PRINCIPLES. 59 

necessity and universality are already in a single case, that case 
alone is sufficient to entitle us to deduce them from it. 1 

"We have established the existence of universal and necessary 
principles : we have marked their origin ; we have shown that 
they appear to us at first from a particular fact, and we have 
shown by what process, by what sort of abstraction the mind dis- 
engages them from the determinate and concrete form which en- 
velops them, but does not constitute them. Our task, then, 
seems accomplished. But it is not, — we must defend the solution 
which we have just presented to you of the problem of the origin 
of principles against the theory of an eminent metaphysician, 
whose just authority might seduce you. M. Maine de Biran 2 
is, like us, the declared adversary of the philosophy of sensa- 
tion, — he admits universal and necessary principles ; but the 
origin which he assigns to them, puts them, according to 
us, in peril, and would lead back by a detour to the empirical 
school. 

Universal and necessary principles, if expressed in propositions, 
embrace several terms. For example, in the principle that every 
phenomenon supposes a cause ; and in this, that every quality 
supposes a substance, by the side of the ideas of quality and phe- 
nomenon are met the ideas of cause and substance, which seem 
the foundation of these two principles. M. de Biran pretends that 
the two ideas are anterior to the two principles which contain 
them, and that we at first find these ideas in ourselves in the 
consciousness that we are cause and substance, and that, these 
ideas once being thus acquired, induction transports them out of 
ourselves, makes us conceive causes and substances wherever there 
are phenomena and qualities, and that the principles of cause and 
substance are thus explained. I beg pardon of my illustrious 



1 On immediate abstraction and comparative abstraction, see 1st Series, 
vol. i., Programme of the Course of 1817, and everywhere in our other 
Courses. 

a On M. de Biran, on his merits and defects, see our Introduction at the 
head of his Works. 



60 LECTURE SECOND. 

friend ; but it is impossible to admit in the least degree this 
explanation. 

The possession of the origin of the idea of cause is by no means 
sufficient for the possession of the origin of the priuciple of caus- 
ality ; for the idea and the principle are things essentially different. 
You have established, I would say to M. de Biran, that the idea 
of cause is found in that of productive volition : — you will to pro- 
duce certain effects, and you produce them ; hence the idea of a 
cause, of a particular cause, which is yourself; but between this 
fact and the axiom that all phenomena which appear necessarily 
have a cause, there is a gulf. 

You believe that you can bridge it over by induction. The 
idea of cause once found in ourselves, induction applies it, you 
say, wherever a new phenomenon appears. But let us not be 
deceived by words, and let us account for this extraordinary 
induction. The following dilemma I submit with confidence to 
the loyal dialectics of M. de Biran : 

Is the induction of which you speak universal and necessary ? 
Then it is a different name for the same thing. An induction 
which forces us universally and necessarily to associate the idea 
of cause with that of every phenomenon that begins to appear is 
precisely what is called the principle of causality. On the con- 
trary, is this induction neither universal nor necessary ? It cannot 
supply the place of the principle of cause, and the explanation 
destroys the thing to be explained. 

It follows from this that the only true result of these various 
psych ological investigations is, that the idea of personal and free 
cause precedes all exercise of the principle of causality, but with- 
out explaining it. 

The theory which we combat is much more powerless in regard 
to other principles which, far from being exercised before the ideas 
from which it is pretended to deduce them, precede them, and 
even give birth to them. How have we acquired the idea of time 
and that of space, except by aid of the principle that the bodies 
and events, which we see are in time and in space? We have 



THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 61 

seen 1 that, without this principle, and confined to the data of the 
senses and consciousness, neither time nor space would exist for 
us. "Whence have we deduced the idea of the infinite, except 
from the principle that the finite supposes the infinite, that all 
finite and defective things, which we perceive by our senses and 
feel within us, are not sufficient for themselves, and suppose some- 
thing infinite and perfect ? Omit the principle, and the idea of 
the infinite is destroyed. Evidently this idea is derived from the 
application of the principle, and it is not the principle which is 
derived from the idea. 

Let us dwell a little longer on the principle of substances. The 
question is to know whether the idea of subject, of substance, 
precedes or follows the exercise of the principle. Upon what 
ground could the idea of substance be anterior to the principle 
that every quality supposes a substance ? Upon the ground alone 
that substance be the object of self-observation, as cause is said to 
be. When I produce a certain effect, I may perceive myself in 
action and as cause ; in that case, there would be no need of the 
intervention of any principle ; but it is not, it cannot be, the same, 
when the question is concerning the substance which is the basis 
of the phenomena of consciousness, of our qualities, our acts, our 
faculties even ; for this substance is not directly observable ; it 
does not perceive itself, it conceives itself. Consciousness per- 
ceives sensation, volition, thought, it does not perceive their 
subject. Who has ever perceived the soul ? Has it not been 
necessary, in order to attain this invisible essence, to set out from 
a principle which has the power to bind the visible to the invisible, 
phenomenon to being, to wit, the principle of substances ? 2 The 
idea of substance is necessarily posterior to the application of the 
principle, and, consequently, it cannot explain its formation. 

Let us be well understood. We do not mean to say that we 



J See lecture 1. 

2 See vol. i. of the 1st Series, course of 1816, and 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 
18, p. 140-146. 



025 LECTURE SECOND. 

have in the mind the principle of substances before perceiving a 
phenomenon, quite ready to apply the principle to the phenome- 
non, when it shall present itself; we only say that it is impossible 
for us to perceive a phenomenon without conceiving at the same 
instant a substance, that is to say, to the power of perceiving a 
phenomenon, either by the senses or by consciousness, is joined 
that of conceiving the substance in which it inheres. The facts 
thus take place : — the perception of phenomena and the concep- 
tion of the substance which is their basis are not successive, they 
are simultaneous. Before this impartial analysis fall at once two 
equal and opposite errors — one, that experience, exterior or inte- 
rior, can beget principles ; the other, that principles precede 
experience. 1 

To sum up, the pretension of explaining principles by the ideas 
which they contain, is a chimerical one. In supposing that all 
the ideas which enter into principles are anterior to them, it is 
necessary to show how principles are deduced from these ideas, — 
which is the first and radical difficulty. Moreover, it is not true 
that in all cases ideas precede principles, for often principles pre- 
cede ideas, — a second difficulty equally insurmountable. But 
whether ideas are anterior or posterior to principles, principles 
are always independent of them ; they surpass them by all the 
superiority of universal and necessary principles over simple 
ideas. 2 

We should, perhaps, beg your pardon for the austerity of this 

1 We have developed this analysis, and elucidated these results in the 17th 
lecture of vol. ii. of the 2d Series. 

2 We have already twice recurred, and more in detail, to the impossibility 
of legitimately explaining universal and necessary principles by any associa- 
tion or induction whatever, founded upon any particular idea, 2d Series, vol. 
iii., Emmen du Systcmc de Locke, lecture 19, p. 166; and 3d Series, vol. iv., 
Introduction aux (Euvres de M. de Biran, p. 319. We have also made known 
the opinion of Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 489. Finally, the pro- 
foundest of Rcid's disciples, the most enlightened judge that we know of 
things philosophical, Sir W. Hamilton, professor of logic in the University 
of Edinburgh, has not hesitated to adopt the conclusions of our discussion, to 
which he is pleased to refer his readers: — Discussions on Philosophy and 
Literature, etc., by Sir William Hamilton, London, 1852. Appendix 1, p. 588. 



/ 

THE ORIGIN OF PRINCIPLES. 



lecture. But philosophical questions must be treated philosophi- 
cally : it does not belong to us to change their character. On 
other subjects, another language. Psychology has its own lan- 
guage, the entire merit of which is a severe precision, as the 
highest law of psychology itself is the shunning of every hy- 
pothesis, and an inviolable respect for facts. This law we have 
religiously followed. While investigating the origin of universal 
and necessary principles, we have especially endeavored not to 
destroy the thing to be explained by a systematic explanation. 
Universal and necessary principles have come forth in their in- 
tegrity from our analysis. We have given the history of the 
different forms which they successively assume, and we have 
shown, that in all these changes they remain the same, and of 
the same authority, whether they enter spontaneously and invol- 
untarily into exercise, and apply themselves to particular and de- 
terminate objects, or reflection turns them back upon themselves 
in order to interrogate them in regard to their nature, or abstrac- 
tion makes them appear under the form in which their univer- 
sality and their necessity are manifest. Their certainty is the 
same under all their forms, in all their applications ; it has neither 
generation nor origin ; it is not born such or such a day, and it 
does not increase with time, for it knows no degrees. We have 
not commenced by believing a little in the principle of causality, 
of substances, of time, of space, of the infinite, etc., then be- 
lieving a little more, then believing wholly. These principles 
have been, from the beginning, what they will be in the end, all- 
powerful, necessary, irresistible. The conviction which they give 
is always absolute, only it is not always accompanied by a clear 
consciousness. Leibnitz himself has no more confidence in the 
principle of causality, and even in his favorite principle of suffi- 
cient reason, than the most ignorant of men ; but the latter ap- 
plies these principles without reflecting on their power, by which 
he is unconsciously governed, whilst Leibnitz is astonished at their 
power, studies it, and for all explanation, refers it to the human 
mind, and to the nature of things, that is to say, he elevates, to 



64 LECTURE SECOND. 

borrow the fine expression of M. Royer-Collard, 1 the ignorance 
of the mass of men to its highest source. Such is, thank heaven, 
the only difference that separates the peasant from the philoso- 
pher, in regard to those great principles of every kind which, in 
one way or another, discover to men the same truths indispensa- 
ble to their physical, intellectual, and moral existence, and, in 
their ephemeral life, on the circumscribed point of space and 
time where fortune has thrown them, reveal to them something 
of the universal, the necessary, and the infinite. 



1 (Euvres de JReid, vol. iv., p. 435. " When we revolt against primitive 
facts, we equally misconceive the constitution of our intelligence and the end 
of philosophy. Is explaining a fact any thing else than deriving it from 
another fact, and if this kind of explanation is to terminate at all, does it 
not suppose facts inexplicable ? The science of the human mind will have 
been carried to the highest degree of perfection it can attain, it will be com- 
plete, when it shall know how to derive ignorance from the most elevated 
source." 



LEOTUKE III. 

ON THE VALUE OF UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY PRINCIPLES. 

Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism. — Eecurrence to the 
theory of spontaneity and reflection. 

After having recognized the existence of universal and neces- 
sary principles, their actual characters, and their primitive char- 
acters, we have to examine their value, and the legitimacy of the 
conclusions which may be drawn from them, — we pass from psy- 
chology to logic. 

We have defended against Locke and his school the necessity 
and universality of certain principles. We now come to Kant, 
who recognizes with us these principles, but confines their power 
within the limits of the subject that conceives them, and, so far 
as subjective, declares them to be without legitimate application 
to any object, that is to say, without objectivity, to use the lan- 
guage of the philosopher of Koenigsberg, which, right or wrong, 
begins to pass into the philosophic language of Europe. 

Let us comprehend well the import of this new discussion. 
The principles that govern our judgments, that preside over most 
sciences, that rule our actions, — have they in themselves an ab- 
solute truth, or are they only regulating laws of our thought ? 
The question is, to know whether it is true in itself, that every 
phenomenon has a cause, and every quality a subject, whether 
every thing extended is really in space, and every succession in 
time, etc. If it is not absolutely true that every quality has its 
subject of inherence, it is not, then, certain, that we have a soul, 
a real substance of all the qualities which consciousness attests. 



66 LECTURE THIRD. 

If the principle of causality is only a law of our mind, the ex- 
ternal world, which this principle discovers to us, loses its reality, 
it is only a succession of phenomena, without any effective 
action over each other, as Hume would have it, and even the 
impressions of our senses are destitute of causes. Matter exists 
no more than the soul. Nothing exists ; every thing is reduced 
to mobile appearances, given up to a perpetual becoming, which 
again is accomplished we know not where, since in reality there 
is neither time nor space. Since the principle of sufficient reason 
only serves to put in motion human curiosity, once in possession 
of the fatal secret that it can attain nothing real, this curiosity 
would be very good to weary itself in searching for reasons which 
inevitably escape it, and in discovering relations which correspond 
only to the wants of our mind, and do not in the least correspond 
to the nature of things. In fine, if the principle of causality, of 
substances, of final causes, of sufficient reason, are only our 
modes of conception, God, whom all these principles reveal to 
us, will no more be any thing but the last of chimeras, which 
vanishes with all the others in the breath of the Critique. 

Kant has established, as well as Reid and ourself, the existence 
of universal and necessary principles ; but an involuntary disciple 
of his century, an unconscious servant of the empirical school, to 
which he places himself in the attitude of an adversary, he makes 
to it the immense concession that these principles are applied only 
to the impressions of sensibility, that their part is to put these 
impressions in a certain order, but that beyond these impressions, 
beyond experience, their power expires. This concession has ru- 
ined the whole enterprise of the German philosopher. 

This enterprise was at once honest and great. Kant, grieved 
at the skepticism of his times, proposed to arrest it by fairly meet- 
ing it. He thought to disarm Hume by conceding to him that 
our highest conceptions do not extend themselves beyond the in- 
closure of the human mind ; and at the same time, he supposed that 
he had sufficiently vindicated the human mind by restoring to it 
the universal and necessary principles which direct it. But, ac- 



THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES. 67 

cording to the strong expression of M. Royer-Collard, "one does 
not encounter skepticism, — as soon as he has penetrated into the 
human understanding he has completely taken it by storm." A 
severe circumspection is one thing, skepticism is another. Doubt 
is not only permitted, it is commanded by reason itself in the em- 
ployment and legitimate applications of our different faculties ; 
but when it is applied to the legitimacy itself of our faculties, it 
no longer elucidates reason, it overwhelms it. In fact, with what 
would you have reason defend herself, when she has called herself 
in question ? Kant himself, then, overturned the dogmatism which 
he proposed at once to restrain and save, at least in morals, and 
he put German philosophy upon a route, at the end of which was 
an abyss. In vain has this great man — for his intentions and his 
character, without speaking of his genius, merit for him this name 
— undertaken with Hume an ingenious and learned controversy ; 
he has been vanquished in this controversy, and Hume remains 
master of the field of battle. 

What matters it, in fact, whether there may or may not be in 
the human mind universal and necessary principles, if these prin- 
ciples only serve to classify our sensations, and to make us ascend, 
step by step, to ideas that are most sublime, but have for ourselves 
no reality ? The human mind is, then, as Kant himself well ex- 
pressed it, like a banker who should take bills ranged in order on 
his desk for real values ; — he possesses nothing but papers. We 
have thus returned, then, to that conceptualism of the middle age, 
which, concentrating truth within the human intelligence, makes 
the nature of things a phantom of intelligence projecting itself 
everywhere out of itself, at once triumphant and impotent, since 
it produces every thing, and produces only chimeras. 1 

1 On conceptualism, as well as on nominalism and realism, see the Intro- 
duction to the inedited works of Abelard, and also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 
21, p. 457; 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 20, p. 215, and the work already cited 
on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, p. 49 : "Nothing exists in this world which 
has not its law more general than itself. There is no individual that is not 
related to a species ; there are no phenomena bound together that are not 
united to a plan. And it is necessary there should really be in nature species 



68 LECTURE THIRD. 

The reproach which a sound philosophy will content itself with 
making to Kant, is, that his system is not in accordance with facts. 
Philosophy can and must separate itself from the crowd for the 
explanation of facts ; but, it cannot be too often repeated, it must 
not in the explanation destroy what it pretends to explain ; other- 
wise it does not explain, it imagines. Here, the important fact 
which it is the question to explain is the belief itself of the human 
mind, and the system of Kant annihilates it. 

In fact, when we are speaking of the truth of universal and 
necessary principles, we do not believe they are true only for us : — 
w r e believe them to be true in themselves, and still true, were there 
no mind of ours to conceive them. We regard them as inde- 
pendent of us ; they seem to us to impose themselves upon our 
intelligence by the force of the truth that is in them. So, in or- 
der to express faithfully what passes within us, it would be neces- 
sary to reverse the proposition of Kant, and instead of saying with 
him, that these principles are the necessary laws of our mind, 
therefore they have no absolute value out of our mind ; we should 
much rather say, that these principles have an absolute value in 
themselves, therefore we cannot but believe them. 

And even this necessity of belief with which the new skepticism 
arms itself, is not the indispensable condition of the application 
of principles. We have established 1 that the necessity of believ- 
ing supposes reflection, examination, an effort to deny and the 
want of power to do it ; but before all reflection, intelligence spon- 
taneously seizes the truth, and, in the spontaneous apperception, 



and a plan, if every thing has been made with weight and measure, cum pon- 
dere et mensura, without which oar very ideas of species and a plan would 
only be chimeras, and human science a systematic illusion. If it is pretended 
that there are individuals and no species, things in juxtaposition and no plan ; 
for example, human individuals more or less different, and no human type, 
and a thousand other things of the same sort, well and good ; but in that 
case there is nothing general in the world, except in the human understand- 
ing, that is to say, in other terms, the world and nature are destitute of order 
and reason except in the head of man." 
1 See preceding lecture. 



THE VALUE OF PKIXCIPLES. 69 

is not the sentiment of necessity, nor consequently that character 
of subjectivity of which the German school speaks so much. 

Let us, then, here recur to that spontaneous intuition of truth, 
which Kant knew not, in the circle where his profoundly reflec- 
tive and somewhat scholastic habits held him captive. 

Is it true that there is no judgment, even affirmative in form, 
which is not mixed with negation ? 

It seems indeed that every affirmative judgment is at the same 
time negative ; in fact, to affirm that a thing exists, is to deny its 
non-existence ; as every negative judgment is at the same time 
affirmative ; for to deny the existence of a thing, is to affirm its 
non-existence. If it is so, then every judgment, whatever may be 
its form, affirmative or negative, since these two forms come back 
to each other, supposes a pre-established doubt in regard to the 
existence of the thing in question, supposes some exercise of re- 
flection, in the course of which the mind feels itself constrained to 
bear such or such a judgment, so that at this point of view the 
foundation of the judgment seems to be in its necessity ; and then 
recurs the celebrated objection : — if you judge thus only because 
it is impossible for you not to do it, you have for a guaranty of 
the truth nothing but yourself and your own ways of conceiving ; 
it is the human mind that transports its laws out of itself; it is the 
subject that makes the object out of its own image, without ever 
going beyond the inclosure of subjectivity. 

We respond, going directly to the root of the difficulty : — it is 
not true that all our judgments are negative. We admit that in 
the reflective state every affirmative judgment supposes a negative 
judgment, and reciprocally. But is reason exercised only on the 
condition of reflection ? Is there not a primitive affirmation 
which implies no negation ? As we often act without deliberating 
on our action, without premeditating it, and as we manifest in this 
case an activity that is free still, but free with a liberty that is not 
reflective ; so reason often perceives the truth without traversing 
doubt or error. Eeflection is a return to consciousness, or to an 
operation wholly different from it. We do not find, then, in any 



70 LECTURE THIRD. 

primitive fact, that every judgment which contains it presupposes 
another in which it is not. We thus arrive at a judgment free 
from all reflection, to an affirmation without any mixture of nega- 
tion, to an immediate intuition, the legitimate child of the natural 
energy of thought, like the inspiration of the poet, the instinct of 
the hero, the enthusiasm of the prophet. Such is the first act of 
the faculty of knowing. If one contradicts this primitive affirma- 
tion, the faculty of knowing falls back upon itself, examines itself, 
attempts to call in doubt the truth it has perceived ; it cannot ; it 
affirms anew what it had affirmed at first ; it adheres to the truth 
already recognized, but with a new sentiment, the sentiment that 
it is not in its power to divest itself of the evidence of this same 
truth ; then, but only then, appears that character of necessity and 
subjectivity that some would turn against the truth, as though 
truth could lose its own value, while penetrating deeper into the 
mind and there triumphing over doubt ; as though reflective evi- 
dence of it were the less evidence; as though, moreover, the 
necessary conception of it were the only form, the primary form 
of the perception of truth. The skepticism of Kant, to which 
good sense so easily does justice, is driven to the extreme and 
forced within its intrenchment by the distinction between sponta- 
neous reason and reflective reason. Reflection is the theatre of the 
combats which reason engages in with itself, with doubt, sophism, 
and error. But above reflection is a sphere of light and peace, 
where reason perceives truth without returning on itself, for the 
sole reason that truth is truth, and because God has made the 
reason to perceive it, as he has made the eye to see and the ear 
to hear. 

Analyze, in fact, with impartiality, the fact of spontaneous ap- 
perception, and you will be sure that it has nothing subjective in 
it except what it is impossible it should not have, to wit, the me 
which is mingled with the fact without constituting it. The me 
inevitably enters into all knowledge, since it is the subject of it. 
Reason directly perceives truth ; but it is in some sort augmented, 
in consciousness, and then we have knowledge. Consciousness is 



THE VALUE OF PEIXCIPLES. 



71 



there its witness, and not its judge ; its only judge is reason, a 
faculty subjective and objective together, according to the lan- 
guage of Germany, which immediately attains absolute truth, 
almost without personal intervention on our part, although it 
might not enter into exercise if personality did not precede or 
were not added to it. 1 

Spontaneous apperception constitutes natural logic. Reflective 
conception is the foundation of logic properly so called. One is 
based upon itself, verum index sui ; the other is based upon the 
impossibility of the reason, in spite of all its efforts, not betaking 
itself to truth and believing in it. The form of the first is an 
affirmation accompanied with an absolute security, and without 
the least suspicion of a possible negation ; the form of the second 
is reflective affirmation, that is to say, the impossibility of deny- 
ing and the necessity of affirming. The idea of negation governs 
ordinary logic, whose affirmations are only the laborious product 
of two negations. Natural logic proceeds by affirmations 
stamped with a simple faith, which instinct alone produces and 
sustains. 

Now, will Kant reply that this reason, which is much purer 
tban that which he has known and described, which is wholly 
pure, which is conceived as something disengaged from reflection, 
from volition, from every thing that constitutes personality, is 
nevertheless personal, since we have a consciousness of it, and 
since it is thus marked with subjectivity ? To this argument we 
have nothing to respond, except that it is destroyed in the excess 
of its pretension. In fact, if, that reason may not be subjective, 
we must in no way participate in it, and must not have even a 
consciousness of its exercise, then there is no means of ever esca- 
ping this reproach of subjectivity, and the ideal of objectivity 
which Kant pursued is a chimerical, extravagant ideal, above, 
or rather beneath, all true intelligence, all reason worthy the 



1 On the just limits of the personality and the impersonality of reason, see 
the following lecture, near the close. 



72 



LECTURE THIRD. 



name ; for it is demanding that this intelligence and this reason 
should cease to have consciousness of themselves, whilst this is 
precisely what characterizes intelligence and reason. 1 Does Kant 
mean, then, that reason, in order to possess a really objective 
power, cannot make its appearance in a particular subject, that it 
must be, for example, wholly outside of the subject which I am ? 
Then it is nothing for me ; a reason that is not mine, that, under 
the pretext of being universal, infinite, and absolute in its essence, 
does not fall under the perception of my consciousness, is for me 
as if it were not. To wish that reason should wholly cease to be 
subjective, is to demand something impossible to God himself. 
No, God himself can understand nothing except in knowing it, 
with his intelligence and with the consciousness of this intelli- 
gence. There is subjectivity, then, in divine knowledge itself; if 
this subjectivity involves skepticism, God is also condemned to 
skepticism, and he can no more escape from it than men ; or in- 
deed, if this is too ridiculous, if the knowledge which God has 
of the exercise of his own intelligence does not involve skepticism 
for him, neither do the knowledge which we have of the exercise 
of our intelligence, and the subjectivity attached to this knowl- 
edge, involve it for us. 

In truth, when we see the father of German philosophy thus 
losing himself in the labyrinth of the problem of the subjectivity 
and the objectivity of first principles, we are tempted to pardon 
Reid for having disdained this problem, for limiting himself to 
repeating that the absolute truth of universal and necessary 
principles rests upon the veracity of our faculties, and that upon 
the veracity of our faculties we are compelled to accept their tes- 
timony. " To explain," says he, " why we are convinced by our 
senses, by consciousness, by our faculties, is an impossible thing ; 
we say — this is so, it cannot be otherwise, and we can go no far- 
ther. Is not this the expression of an irresistible belief, of a belief 

1 We have everywhere maintained, that consciousness is the condition, or 
rather the necessary form of intelligence. Not to go heyond this volume, 
see farther on, lecture 5. 



THE VALUE OF PRINCIPLES. 73 

which is the voice of nature, and against which we contend in vain ? 
Do we wish to penetrate farther, to demand of our faculties, one by 
one, what are their titles to our confidence, and to refuse them con- 
fidence until they have produced their claims ? Then, I fear that 
this extreme wisdom would conduct us to folly, and that, not 
having been willing to submit to the common lot of humanity, 
we should be deprived of the light of common sense." 1 

Let us support ourselves also by the following admirable pas- 
sage of him who is, for so many reasons, the venerated master of 
the French philosophy of the nineteenth century. " Intellectual 
life," says M. Royer-Collard, " is an uninterrupted succession, not 
only of ideas, but of explicit or implicit beliefs. The beliefs of 
the mind are the powers of the soul and the motives of the will. 
That which determines us to belief we call evidence. Reason 
renders no account of evidence ; to condemn reason to account 
for evidence, is to annihilate it, for it needs itself an evidence 
which is fitted for it. These are fundamental laws of belief 
which constitute intelligence, and as they flow from the same 
source they have the same authority ; they judge by the same 
right ; there is no appeal from the tribunal of one to that of an- 
other. He who revolts against a single one revolts against all, 
and abdicates his whole nature." 2 

Let us deduce the consequences of the facts of which we have 
just given an exposition. 

1st. The argument of Kant, which is based upon the charac- 
ter of necessity in principles in order to weaken their objective 
authority, applies only to the form imposed by reflection on these 
principles, and does not reach their spontaneous application, 
wherein the character of necessity no longer appears. 

2d. After all, to conclude with the human race from the neces- 
sity of believing in the truth of what we believe, is not to con- 
clude badly ; for it is reasoning from effect to cause, from the 
sign to the thing signified. 

1 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 22, p. 494. 
2 (Euvres de Held, vol. iii., p. 450. 
4: 



74 LECTURE THIRD. 

3d. Moreover, the value of principles is above all demonstra- 
tion. Psychological analysis seizes, takes, as it were, by surprise, 
in the fact of intuition, an affirmation that is absolute, that is in- 
accessible to doubt ; it establishes it ; and this is equivalent to 
demonstration. To demand any other demonstration than this, 
is to demand of reason an impossibility, since absolute principles, 
being necessary to all demonstration, could only be demonstrated 
by themselves. 1 

1 We have not thought it best to make this lecture lengthy by an exposi- 
tion and detailed refutation of the Critique of Pure Reason and its sad con- 
clusion ; the little that we say of it is sufficient for our purpose, which is 
much less historical than dogmatical. We refer the reader to a volume that 
we have devoted to the father of German philosophy, 1st Series, vol. v., 
in which we Lave again taken up and developed some of the arguments that 
are here used, in which we believe that we have irresistibly exposed the 
capital defect of the transcendental logic of Kant, and of the whole German 
school, that it leads to skepticism, inasmuch as it raises superhuman, chi- 
merical, extravagant problems, and, when well understood, cannot solve 
them. See especially lectures 6 and 8. 






LECTUKE IY. 



GOD THE PEDs"CrPLE OF PKIN"CTPLES. 



Object of the lecture: What is the i;ltimate hasis of absolute truth?— 
Four hypotheses : Absolute truth may reside either in us, in particular 
beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We perceive absolute truth, 
we do not constitute it. 2. Particular beings participate in absolute truth, 
but do not explain it ; refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in 
itself; defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God. — Plato ; St. Augustine ; 
Descartes; Malebranche ; Fenelon; Bossuet; Leibnitz. — Truth the medi- 
ator between God and man. — Essential distinctions. 



We have justified the principles that govern our intelligence ; 
■we have become confident that there is truth outside of us, that 
there are verities worthy of that name, which we can perceive, 
which we do not make, which are not solely conceptions of our 
mind, which would still exist although our mind should not per- 
ceive them. Now this other problem naturally presents itself : 
What, then, in themselves, are these universal and necessary 
truths \ where do they reside ? whence do they come ? We do 
not raise this problem, and the problems that it embraces ; the 
human mind itself proposes them, and it is fully satisfied only 
when it has resolved them, and when it has reached the extreme 
limit of knowledge that it is within its power to attain. 

It is certain that the principles which, in all the orders of 
knowledge, discover to us absolute and necessary truths, consti- 
tute part of our reason, wdiich surely makes its dwelling in us, 
and is intimately connected with personality in the depths of in- 
tellectual life. It follows that the truth, which reason reveals to 
us, falls thereby into close relation with the subject that perceives 
it, and seems only a conception of our mind. Nevertheless, as 



76 LECTURE FOURTH. 

we have proved, we perceive truth, we are not the authors of it. 
If the person that I am, if the individual me does not, per- 
haps, explain the whole of reason, how could it explain truth, 
and absolute truth ? Man, limited and passing away, perceives 
necessary, eternal, infinite truth ; that is for him a privilege suffi- 
ciently high ; but he is neither the principle that sustains truth, 
nor the principle that gives it being. Man may say, My reason ; 
but give him credit for never having dared to say, My truth. 

If absolute truths are beyond man who perceives them, once 
more, where are they, then ? A peripatetic would respond — 
In nature. Is it, in fact, necessary to seek for them any other 
subject than the beings themselves which they govern ? What 
are the laws of nature, except certain properties which our mind 
disengages from the beings and phenomena in which they are 
met, in order to consider them apart ? Mathematical principles 
are nothing more. For example, the axiom thus expressed — The 
whole is greater than any of its parts, is true of any whole and 
part whatever. The principle of contradiction, considered in its 
logical title, as the condition of all our judgments, of all our rea- 
sonings, constitutes a part of the essence of all being, and no 
being can exist without containing it. The universal exists, says 
Aristotle, but it does not exist apart from particular beings. 1 

This theory which considers universals as having their basis in 
things, is a progress towards the pure conceptualism which we 
have in the beginning indicated and shunned. Aristotle is much 
more of a realist than Abelard and Kant. He is quite right in 
maintaining that universals are in particular things, for particular 
things could not be without universals ; universals give to them 
their fixity, even for a day, and their unity. But from the fact 
that universals are in particular beings, is it necessary to conclude 
that they, wholly and exclusively, reside there, and that they 



1 See our work entitled, Metaphysics of Aristotle, 2d edition, passim. In 
Aristotle himself, sec especially Metaphysics, book vii., chap, xii., and book 
xiii., chap. ix. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 77 

have no other reality than that of the objects to which they are 
applied ? It is the same with principles of which universals are 
the constitutive elements. It is, it is- true, in the particular fact, 
of a particular cause producing a particular event, that is given 
us the universal principle of causality ; but this principle is much 
more extensive than the facts, for it is applied, not only to this 
fact, but to a thousand others. The particular fact contains the 
principle, but it does not wholly contain it, and, far from giving 
the basis of the principle, it is based upon it. As much may be 
said of other principles. 

Perhaps it will be replied that, if a principle is certainly more 
extensive than such a fact, or such a being, it is not more exten- 
sive than all facts and all beings, and that nature, considered as a 
whole, can explain that which each particular being does not 
explain. But nature, in its totality, is still only a finite and 
contingent thing, whilst the principles to be explained have a 
necessary and infinite bearing. The idea of the infinite can come 
neither from any particular being, nor from the whole of beings. 
Entire nature will not furnish us the idea of perfection, for all 
the beings of nature are imperfect. Absolute principles govern, 
then, all facts and all beings, they do not spring from them. 

Will it be necessary to come to the opinion, then, that absolute 
truths, being explicable neither by humanity nor by nature, sub- 
sist by themselves, and are to themselves their own foundation 
and their own subject ? 

But this opinion contains still more absurdities than the prece- 
ding; for, I ask, what are truths, absolute or contingent, that 
exist by themselves, out of things in which they are found, and 
out of the intelligence that conceives them ? Truth is, then, only 
a realized abstraction. There are no quintessential metaphysics 
which can prevail against good sense ; and if such is the Platonic 
theory of ideas, Aristotle is right in his opposition to it. But such 
a theory is only a chimera that Aristotle created for the pleasure 
of combating it. 

Let us hasten to remove absolute truths from this ambiguous 



78 LECTURE FOURTH. 

and equivocal state. And how ? By applying to them a prin- 
ciple which should now be familiar to you. Yes, truth necessarily 
appeals to something beyond itself. As every phenomenon has 
its subject of inherence, as our faculties, our thoughts, our voli- 
tions, our sensations, exist only in a being which is ourselves, so 
truth supposes a being in which it resides, and absolute truths sup- 
pose a being absolute as themselves, wherein they have their final 
foundation. We come thus to something absolute, which is no 
longer suspended in the vagueness of abstraction, but is a being 
substantially existing. This being, absolute and necessary, since 
it is the subject of necessary and absolute truths, this being which 
is at the foundation of truth as its very essence, in a single word, 
is called God} 

This theory, which conducts from absolute truth to absolute 
being, is not new in the history of philosophy : it goes back to 
Plato. 

Plato, 2 in searching for the principles of knowledge clearly saw, 
with Socrates his master, that the least definition, without which 
there can be no precise knowledge, supposes something universal 
and one, which does not come within the reach of the senses, 
which reason alone can discover ; this something universal and 
one he called Idea. 

Ideas, which possess universality and unity, do not come from 
material, changing, and mobile things, to which they are applied, 
and which render them intelligible. On the other hand, it is not 



1 There are doubtless many other ways of arriving at God, as we shall suc- 
cessively see ; but this is the way of metaphysics. We do not exclude any 
of the known and accredited proofs of the existence of God ; but we begin 
with that which gives all the others. See further on, part ii., God, the Prin- 
ciple of Beauty, and part iii., God, the Principle of the Good, and the last 
lecture, which sums up the whole course. 

2 We have said a word on the Platonic theory of ideas, 1st Series, vol. iv., 
p. 401 and 522. See also, vol. ii. of the 2d Series, lecture 7, on Plato and 
Aristotle, especially 3d Scries, vol. i., a few words on the Language of the 
TJieory of Ideas, p. 121 ; our work on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, p. 48 and 
149, and our translation of Plato, passim. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 79 

the human mind that constitutes ideas ; for man is not the meas- 
ure of truth. 

Plato calls Ideas veritable beings, <ra ovrug o'vra, since they 
alone communicate to sensible things and to human cognitions 
their truth and their unity. But does it follow that Plato gives 
to Ideas a substantial existence, that he makes of them beings 
properly so called ? It is important that no cloud should be left 
on this fundamental point of the Platonic theory. 

At first, if any one should pretend that in Plato Ideas are be- 
ings subsisting by themselves, without interconnection and without 
relation to a common centre, numerous passages of the Timaeus 
might be objected to him, 1 in which Plato speaks of Ideas as 
forming in their whole an ideal unity, which is the reason of the 
unity of the visible world. 2 

Will it be said that this ideal world forms a distinct unity, a 
unity separate from God ? But, in order to sustain this assertion, 
it is necessary to forget so many passages of the Republic, in 
which the relations of truth and science with the Good, that is 
to say, with God, are marked in brilliant characters. 

Let not that magnificent comparison be forgotten, in which, after 
having said that the sun produces in the physical world light and 
life, Socrates adds : " So thou art able to say, intelligible beings 
not only hold from the Good that which renders them intelligi- 
ble, but also their being and their essence." 3 So, intelligible be- 
ings, that is to say, Ideas, are not beings that exist by themselves. 

Men go on repeating with assurance that the Good, in Plato, 
is only the idea of the good, and that an idea is not God. I 
reply, that the Good is in fact an idea, according to Plato, but 
that the idea here is not a pure conception of the mind, an object 
of thought, as the peripatetic school understood it ; I add, that 

1 Aristotle first stated this ; modern peripatetics have repeated it ; and 
after them, all who have wished to decry the ancient philosophy, and phi- 
losophy in general, by giving the appearance of absurdity to its most illus- 
trious representative. 

2 See particularly p. 121 of the Timaeus, vol. xii. of our translation. 

3 Republic, book vi., vol.-x. of our translation, p. 57. 



80 LECTURE FOURTH. 

the Idea of the Good is in Plato the first of Ideas, and that, for 
this reason, while remaining for us an object of thought, it is 
confounded as to existence with God. If the Idea of the Good 
is not God himself, how will the following passage, also taken 
from the Republic, be explained ? " At the extreme limits of the 
intellectual world is the Idea of the Good, which is perceived 
with difficulty, but, in fine, cannot be perceived without con- 
cluding that it is the source of all that is beautiful and good ; 
that in the visible world it produces light, and the star whence 
the light directly comes, that in the invisible world it directly 
produces truth and intelligence." 1 Who can produce, on the 
one hand, the sun and light, on the other, truth and intelligence, 
except a real being ? 

But all doubt disappears before the following passages from 
the Phcedrus, neglected, as it would seem designedly, by the de- 
tractors of Plato : " In this transition, (the soul) contemplates 
justice, contemplates wisdom, contemplates science, not that 
wherein enters change, nor that which shows itself different in 
the different objects which we are pleased to call beings, but 
science as it exists in that which is called being, par excellence. 

" 2 — " It belongs to the soul to conceive the universal, that 

is to say, that which, in the diversity of sensations, can be com- 
prehended under a rational unity. This is the remembrance of 
what the soul has seen during its journey in the train of Deity, 
when, disdaining what we improperly call beings, it looked up- 
wards to the only true being. So it is just that the thought of 
the philosopher should alone have wings ; for its remembrance is 
always as much as possible with the things which make God a 
true God, inasmuch as he is with them? 3 

So the objects of the philosopher's contemplation, that is to say, 
Ideas, are in God, and it is by these, by his essential union with 
these, that God is the true God, the God who, as Plato admirably 
says in the Sophist, participates in august and holy intelligence* 

1 Republic, book vii., p. 20 2 Phcedrus, vol. vi., p. 51. 

* Pliczdrus, vol. vi., p. 55. 4 Vol. xi., p. 261. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 81 

It is therefore certain, that, in the true Platonic theor} T , Ideas 
are not beings in the vulgar sense of the word, beings which 
would be neither in the mind of man, nor in nature, nor in 
God, and would subsist only by themselves. No, Plato con- 
siders Ideas as being at once the principles of sensible things, 
of which they are the laws, and the principles also of human 
knowledge, which owes to them its light, its rule, and its 
end, and the essential attributes of God, that is to say, God 
himself. 

Plato is truly the father of the doctrine which we have ex- 
plained, and the great philosophers who have attached themselves 
to his school have always professed this same doctrine. 

The founder of Christian metaphysics, St. Augustine, is a de- 
clared disciple of Plato : everywhere he speaks, like Plato, of the 
relation of human reason to the divine reason, and of truth to 
God. In the City of God, book x., chap, ii., and in chap. ix. of 
book vii. of the Confessions, he goes to the extent of comparing 
the Platonic doctrine with that of St. John. 

He adopts, without reserve, the theory of Ideas. Book of 
Eighty-three Questions, question 46 : " Ideas are the primordial 
forms, and, as it were, the immutable reasons of things ; they are 
not created, they are eternal, and always the same : they are con- 
tained in the divine intelligence ; and without being subject to 
birth and death, they are the types according to which is formed 
every thing that is born and dies." l 

" What man, pious, and penetrated with true religion, would 
dare to deny that all things that exist, that is to say, all things 
that, each of its kind, possess a determinate nature, have been 
created by God ? This point being once conceded, can it be said 
that God has created things without reason ? If it is impossible 
to say or think this, it follows that all things have been created 

1 Edit. Bened., vol. vi., p. 17 : Idex sunt forma quadam principals et 
rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, qua ipsa formata non sunt ac 
per hoc aterna ac semper eodem modo sese liabentes, qua in divina intelligent i a- 
continentur .... 

4* 



82 LECTURE FOURTH. 

with reason. But the reason of the existence of a man cannot 
be the same as the reason of the existence of a horse; that 
is absurd; each thing has therefore been created by virtue of 
a reason that is peculiar to it. Now, where can these reasons 
be, except in the mind of the Creator? For he saw nothing 
out of himself, which he could use as a model for creating 
what he created : such an opinion would be sacrilege. 1 

" If the reasons of things to be created and things created are 
contained in the divine intelligence, and if there is nothing in the 
divine intelligence but the eternal and immutable, the reasons of 
things which Plato calls Ideas, are the eternal and immutable 
truths, by the participation in which every thing that is is such 
as it is." 2 

St. Thomas himself, who scarcely knew Plato, and who was 
often enough held by Aristotle in a kind of empiricism, carried 
away by Christianity and St. Augustine, let the sentiment escape 
him, " that our natural reason is a sort of participation in the 
divine reason, that to this we owe our knowledge and our 
judgments, that this is the reason why it is said, that we see 
every thing in God." 3 There are in St. Thomas many other 
similar passages, of perhaps an expressive Platonism, which is 
not the Platonism of Plato, but of the Alexandrians. 

The Cartesian philosophy, in spite of its profound originality, 
and its wholly French character, is full of the Platonic spirit. 
Descartes has no thought of Plato, whom apparently he has never 
read ; in nothing does he imitate or resemble him : nevertheless, 



1 Edit. Benecl., vol. vi., p. 18. Singula igitur propriis areata sunt rationi- 
bus. Has autem rationes ubi arbitrandum est esse nisi in mente Greatoris ? 
non enim extra se quidquam intuebatur, ut secundum id constitueret quod con- 
stituebat: nam hoc opinari sacrjlegum est. 

*3id. See also, book of the Confessions, book ii. of the Free Will, book 
xii. of the Trinity, book vii. of the City of God, &c. 

8 Summa totius theologian. Primae partis qusest. xii. art. 11. Ad tertium 
dicendum, quod omnia dicimus in Deo videre, et secundum ipsum de omnibus 
judicare, in quantum per participationem sui luminis omnia cognoscimus et 
dijudicamus. Nam et ipsum lumen naturale rationis participate qucedam est 
divini luminis. 






GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 83 

from the first, he is met in the same regions with Plato, whither 
he goes by a different route. 

The notion of the infinite and the perfect is for Descartes what 
the universal, the Idea, is for Plato. No sooner has Descartes 
found by consciousness that he thinks, than he concludes from 
this that he exists, then, in course, by consciousness still, he recog- 
nizes himself as imperfect, full of defects, limitations, miseries, 
and, at the same time, conceives something infinite and perfect. 
He possesses the idea of the infinite and the perfect ; but this 
idea is not his own work, for he is imperfect ; it must then have 
been put into him by another being endowed with perfection, 
whom he conceives, whom he does not possess : — that being is 
God. Such is the process by which Descartes, setting out from 
his own thought, and his own being, elevated himself to God. 
This process, so simple, which he so simply exposes in the Dis- 
cours de la Methode, he will put successively, in the Meditations, 
in the Responses aux Objections, in the Principes, under the most 
diverse forms, he will accommodate it, if it is necessary, to the 
language of the schools, in order that it may penetrate into them. 
After all, this process is compelled to conclude, from the idea of 
the infinite and the perfect, in the existence of a cause of this idea, 
adequate, at least, to the idea itself, that is to say, infinite and 
perfect. One sees that the first difference between Plato and 
Descartes is, that the ideas which in Plato are at once conceptions 
of our mind, and the principles of things, are for Descartes, as 
well as for all modern philosophy, only our conceptions, amongst 
which that of the infinite and perfect occupies the first place ; the 
second difference is, that Plato goes from ideas to God by the 
principle of substances, if we may be allowed to use this techni- 
cal language of modern philosophy ; whilst Descartes employs 
rather the principle of causality, and concludes — well understood 
without syllogism — from the idea of the infinite and the perfect 
in a cause also perfect and infinite. 1 But under these differences, 

1 On the doctrine of Descartes, and on the proof of the existence of God 



84 LECTURE FOURTH. 

and in spite of many more, is a common basis, a genius the same, 
which at first elevates us above the senses, and, by the interme- 
diary of marvellous ideas that are incontestably in us, bears us 
towards him who alone can be their substance, who is the infinite 
and perfect author of our idea of infinity and perfection. For 
this reason, Descartes belongs to the family of Plato and Socrates. 

The idea of the perfect and the finite being once introduced 
into the philosophy of the seventeenth century, it becomes there 
for the successors of Descartes what the theory of ideas became 
for the successors of Plato. 

Among the French writers, Malebranche, perhaps, reminds us 
with the least disadvantage, although very imperfectly still, of 
the manner of Plato : he sometimes expresses its elevation and 
grace ; but he is far from possessing the Socratic good sense, and, 
it must be confessed, no one has clouded more the theory of ideas 
by exaggerations of every kind which he has mingled with them. 9 
Instead of establishing that there is in the human reason, wholly 
personal as it is by its intimate relation with our other faculties, 
something also which is not personal, something universal which 
permits it to elevate itself to universal truths, Malebranche does 
not hesitate to absolutely confound the reason that is in us with 
the divine reason itself. Moreover, according to Malebranche, we 
do not directly know particular things, sensible objects ; we know 
them only by ideas ; it is the intelligible extension and not the 
material extension that we immediately perceive ; in vision the 



and the true process that he employs, see 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 
64, lecture 22, p. 509—518 ; vol. v., lecture 6, p. 205 ; 2d Series, vol. xi., lec- 
ture 11 ; especially the three articles, already cited, of the Journal des Sa- 
vants for the year 1850. 

a See on Malebranche, 2d Series, lecture 2, and 3d Series, vol. in., Modern 
Philosophy, as well as the Fragments of Cartesian Philosophy ; preface of the 
1st edition of our Pascal:— " On this basis, so pure, Malebranche is not 
.steady; is excessive and rash, 1 know; narrow and extreme, I do not fear 
to say; but always sublime, expressing only one side of Plato, but expressing 
it in a wholly Christian spirit and in angelic language. Malebranche is a 
Descartes who strays, having found divine wings, and lost all connection 
with the earth." 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 85 

proper object of the mind is the universal, the idea ; and as the 
idea is in God, it is in God that we see all things. We can 
understand how well-formed minds must have been shocked by- 
such a theory ; but it is not just to confound Plato with his bril- 
liant and unfaithful disciple. In Plato, sensibility directly attains 
sensible things ; it makes them known to us as they are, that is 
to say, as very imperfect and undergoing perpetual change, which 
renders the knowledge that we have of them almost unworthy of 
the name of knowledge. It is reason, different in us from sensi- 
bility, which, above sensible objects, discovers to us the universal, 
the idea, and gives a knowledge solid and durable. Having once 
attained ideas, we have reached God himself, in whom they have 
their foundation, who finishes and consummates true knowledge. 
But we have no need of God, nor of ideas, in order to perceive 
sensible objects, which are defective and changing; for this our 
senses are sufficient. Reason is distinct from the senses ; it tran- 
scends the imperfect knowledge of what they are capable; it 
attains the universal, because it possesses something universal 
itself; it participates in the divine reason, but it is not the divine 
reason ; it is enlightened by it, it comes from it, — it is not it. 

Fenelon is inspired at once by Malebranche and Descartes in 
the treatise, de V Existence de Dieu. The second part is entirely 
Cartesian in method, in the order and sequence of the proofs. 
Nevertheless, Malebranche also appears there, especially in the 
fourth chapter, on the nature of ideas, and he predominates in all 
the metaphysical portions of the first part. After the explana- 
tions which we have given, it will not be difficult for you to 
discern what is true and what is at times excessive in the passages 
which follow : l 

Part i., chap. lii. " Oh ! how great is the mind of man ! It 
bears in itself what astonishes itself and infinitely surpasses itself. 
Its ideas are universal, eternal, and immutable. . . . The idea of 

1 We use the only good edition of the treatise on the Existence of God, 
that which the Abbe" Gosselin has given in the collection of the Works of 
Fenelon. Versailles, 1820. See vol. L, p. 80. 



86 LECTURE FOURTH. 

the infinite is in me as well as that of lines, numbers, and circles. 
. . . — Chap. liv. Besides this idea of the infinite, I have also 
universal and immutable notions, which are the rule of all my 
judgments. I can judge of nothing except by consulting them, 
and it is not in my power to judge against what they represent 
to me. My thoughts, far from being able to correct this rule, are 
themselves corrected in spite of me by this superior rule, and they 
are irresistibly adjusted to its decision. Whatever effort of mind 
I may make, I can never succeed in doubting that two and two 
are four ; that the whole is not greater than any of its parts ; 
that the centre of a perfect circle is not equidistant from all points 
of the circumference. I am not at liberty to deny these proposi- 
tions ; and if I deny these truths, or others similar to them, I 
have in me something that is above me, that forces me to the 
conclusion. This fixed and immutable rule is so internal and so 
intimate that I am inclined to take it for myself; but it is above 
me since it corrects me, redresses me, and puts me in defiance 
against myself, and reminds me of my impotence. It is some- 
thing that suddenly inspires me, provided I listen to it, and I am 
never deceived except in not listening to it. . . . This internal 
rule is what I call my reason. . . . — Chap. lv. In truth my 
reason is in me ; for I must continually enter into myself in order 
to find it. But the higher reason which corrects me when neces- 
sary, which I consult, exists not by me, and makes no part of me. 
This rule is perfect and immutable ; I am changing and imper- 
fect. When I am deceived, it does not lose its integrity. When 
I am undeceived, it is not this that returns to its end : it is this 
which, without ever having deviated, has the authority over me 
to remind me of my error, and to make me return. It is a mas- 
ter within, which makes me keep silent, which makes me speak, 
which makes me believe, which makes me doubt, which makes 
me acknowledge my errors or confirm my judgments. Listening 
to it, I am instructed ; listening to myself, I err. This master is 
everywhere, and its voice makes itself heard, from end to end of 
the universe, in all men as well as in me. . . . — Chap. Ivi. . . , 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 87 

That which appears the most in us and seems to be the founda- 
tion of ourselves, I mean our reason, is that which is least of all 
our own, which we are constrained to believe to be especially 
borrowed. We receive without cessation, and at all moments, a 
reason superior to us, as we breathe without cessation the air, 
which is a foreign body. . . . — Chap. lvii. The internal and 
universal master always and everywhere speaks the same truths. 
We are not this master. It is true that we often speak without 
it, and more loftily than it. But we are then deceived, we are 
stammering, we do not understand ourselves. We even fear to 
see that we are deceived, and we close the ear through fear of 
being humiliated by its corrections. Without doubt, man, who 
fears being corrected by this incorruptible reason, who always 
wanders in not following it, is not that perfect, universal, immu- 
table reason which corrects him in spite of himself. In all things 
we find, as it were, two principles within us. One gives, the 
other receives ; one wants, the other supplies ; one is deceived, the 
other corrects ; one goes wrong by its own inclination, the other 
rectifies it. . . . Each one feels within himself a limited and sub- 
altern reason, which wanders when it escapes a complete subordi- 
nation, which is corrected only by returning to the yoke of 
another superior, universal, and immutable power. So every 
thing in us bears the mark of a subaltern, limited, partial, bor- 
rowed reason, which needs another to correct it at every moment. 
All men are rational, because they possess the same reason which 
is communicated to them in different degrees. There is a certain 
number of wise men ; but the wisdom which they receive, as it 
were, from the fountain-head, which makes them what they are, 

is one and the same — Chap, lviii. Where is this wisdom ? 

Where is this reason, which is both common and superior to all 
the limited and imperfect reasons of the human race ? Where, 
then, is this oracle which is never silent, against which the vain 
prejudices of peoples are always impotent ? Where is this reason 
which we ever need to consult, which comes to us to inspire us 
with the desire of listening to its voice ? Where is this light 



88 LECTUKE FOURTH. 

that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world? . . . The 
substance of the human eye is not light ; on the contrary, the eye 
borrows at each moment the light of the sun's rays. So my mind 
is not the primitive reason, the universal and immutable truth, it 
is only the medium that conducts this original light, that is illu- 
minated by it — Chap. lx. I find two reasons in myself, 

— one is myself, the other is above me. That which is in me is 
very imperfect, faulty, uncertain, preoccupied, precipitate, subject 
to aberration, changing, conceited, ignorant, and limited ; in fine, 
it possesses nothing but what it borrows. The other is common to 
all men, and is superior to all ; it is perfect, eternal, immutable, 
always ready to communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all 
minds that are deceived, in fine, incapable of ever being exhausted 
or divided, although it gives itself to those who desire it. Where 
is this perfect reason, that is so near me and so different from 
me ? Where is it ? It must be something real. . . . Where is 
this supreme reason ? Is it not God that I am seeking ?" 

Part ii., chap, i., sect. 28. 1 " I have in me the idea of the infi- 
nite and of infinite perfection Give me a finite thing as 

great as you please — let it quite transcend the reach of my senses, 
so that it becomes, as it were, infinite to my imagination ; it 
always remains finite in my mind ; I conceive a limit to it, even 
when I cannot imagine it. I am not able to mark the limit; but 
I know that it exists; and far from confounding it with the infi- 
nite, I conceive it as infinitely distant from the idea that I have 
of the veritable infinite. If one speaks to me of the indefinite as 
a mean between the two extremes of the infinite and the limited, 
I reply, that it signifies nothing, that, at least, it only signifies 
something truly finite, whose boundaries escape the imagination 
without escaping the mind. . . . Sect. 29. Where have I ob- 
tained this idea, which is so much above me, which infinitely 
surpasses me, which astonishes me, which makes me disappear in 
my own eyes, which renders the infinite present to me ? Whence 

1 Edit, do Versailles, p. 145. 



GOD THE PKIXCIPLE OF PEDsXIPLES. 89 

does it come ? Where have I obtained it i . . . Once more, 
whence comes this marvellous representation of the infinite, which 
pertains to the infinite itself, which resembles nothing* finite ? It 
is in me, it is more than myself; it seems to me every thing, and 
myself nothing. I can neither efface, obscure, diminish, nor con- 
tradict it. It is in me ; I have not put it there, I have found it 
there ; and I have found it there only because it was already 
there before I sought it. It remains there invariable, even when 
I do not think of it, when I think of something else. I find it 
whenever I seek it, and it often presents itself when I am not 
seeking it. It does not depend upon me ; I depend upon it. . . . 
Moreover, who has made this infinite representation of the infinite, 
so as to give it to me ? Has it made itself ? Has the infinite 
imao-e 1 of the infinite had no original, according to which it has 
been made, no real cause that has produced it ? Where are we 
in relation to it ? And what a mass of extravagances ! It is, 
therefore, absolutely necessary to conclude that it is the infinitely 
perfect being that renders himself immediately present to me, 
when I conceive him, and that he himself is the idea which I 
have of him. . . ." 

Chap, iv., sect. 49. ". . . My ideas are myself; for they are 
my reason. . . . My ideas, and the basis of myself, or of my 
mind, appear but the same thing. On the other hand, my mind 
is changing, uncertain, ignorant, subject to error, precipitate in 
its judgments, accustomed to believe what it does not clearly un- 
derstand, and to judge without having sufficiently consulted its 
ideas, which are by themselves certain and immutable. My 
ideas, then, are not myself, and I am not my ideas. What shall 
I believe, then, they can be ? . . . What then ! are my ideas 



1 It is not necessary to remark how incorrect are the expressions, represen- 
tation of the infinite, image of the infinite, especially infinite image of the infi- 
nite. We cannot represent to ourselves, we cannot imagine to ourselves the 
infinite. We conceive the infinite; the infinite is not an object of the imagi- 
nation, but of the understanding, of reason. See 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 
6, p. 223, 224. 



90 LECTURE FOURTH. 

God ? They are superior to my mind, since they rectify and 
correct it ; they have the character of the Divinity, for they are 
universal and immutable like God ; they really subsist, according 
to a principle that we have already established : nothing exists 
so really as that which is universal and immutable. If that 
which is changing, transitory, and derived, truly exists, much 
more does that which cannot change, and is necessary. It is 
then necessary to find in nature something existing and real, that 
is, my ideas, something that is within me, and is not myself, that 
is superior to me, that is in me even when I am not thinking of 
it, with which I believe myself to be alone, as though I were 
only with myself, in fine, that is more present to me, and more 
intimate than my own foundation. I know not what this some- 
thing, so admirable, so familiar, so unknown, can be, except God." 

Let us now hear the most solid, the most authoritative of the 
Christian doctors of the seventeenth century — let us hear Bos- 
suet in his Logic, and in the Treatise on the Knowledge of God 
and Self} 

Bossuet may be said to have had three masters in philosophy — 
St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and Descartes. He had been taught 
at the college of Navarre the doctrine of St. Thomas, that is to 
say, a modified peripateticism ; at the same time he was nour- 
ished by the reading of St. Augustine, and out of the schools he 
found spread abroad the philosophy of Descartes. He adopted 
it, and had no difficulty in reconciling it with that of St. Augus- 
tine, while, upon more than one point, it corroborated the doc- 
trine of St. Thomas. Bossuet invented nothing in philosophy ; 
he received every thing, but every thing united and purified, 
thanks to that supreme good sense which in him is a quality pre- 
dominating over force, grandeur, and eloquence. 2 In the passages 

1 By a trifling anachronism, for which we shall be pardoned, we have heie 
joined to the Traite de la Connaissance de Bleu et de Soi-mcme, so long known, 
the Logiqve, which was only published in 1828. 

2 4th Series, vol. i., preface of the 1st edition of Pascal: " Bossuet, with 
more moderation, and supported by a good sense which nothing can shake, 
is, in his way, a disciple of the same doctrine, only the extremes of which, 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 91 

which I am about to exhibit to you, which I hope you will im- 
press upon your memories, you will not find the grace of Male- 
branche, the exhaustless abundance of Fenelon; you will find 
what is better than either, to wit, clearness and precision — all the 
rest in him is in some sort an addition to these. 

Fenelon disengages badly enough the process which conducts 
from ideas, from universal and necessary truths, to God. Bossuet 
renders to himself a strict account of this process, and marks it 
with force ; it is the principle that we have invoked, that which 
concludes from attributes in a subject, from qualities in a being, 
from laws in a legislator, from eternal verities in an eternal mind 
that comprehends them and eternally possesses them. Bossuet 
cites St. Augustine, cites Plato himself, interprets him and de- 
fends him in advance against those who would make Platonic 
ideas beings subsisting by themselves, whilst they really exist 
only in the mind of God. 

Logic, book i., chap, xxxvi. " When I consider a rectilineal 
triangle as a figure bounded by three straight lines, and having 
three angles equal to two right angles, neither more nor less ; 
and when I pass from this to an equilateral triangle with its 
three sides and its three angles equal, whence it follows, that I 



according to his custom, he shunned. This great mind, which may have 
superiors in invention, but has no equal for force in common sense, was 
very careful not to place revelation and philosophy in opposition to each 
other : he found it the safer and truer way to give to each its due, to bor- 
row from philosophy whatever natural light it can give, in order to increase 
it in turn with the supernatural light, of which the Church has been made 
the depository. It is in this sovereign good sense, capable of comprehend- 
ing every thing, and uniting every thing, that resides the supreme original- 
ity of Bossuet. He shunned particular opinions as small minds seek them 
for the triumph of self-love. He did not think of himself ; he only searched 
for truth, and wherever he found it he listened to it, well assured that if the 
connection between truths of different orders sometimes escapes us, it is no 
reason for closing the eyes to any truth. If we wished to give a scholastic 
name to Bossuet, according to the custom of the Middle Age, we would 
have to call him the infallible doctor. Pie is not only one of the highest, he 
is also one of the best and solidest intelligences that ever existed ; and this 
great conciliator has easily reconciled religion and philosophy, St. Augustine 
and Descartes, tradition and reason." 



XJZ LECTURE FOURTH. 

consider each angle of this triangle as less than a right angle ; 
and when I come again to consider a right-angled triangle, and 
what I clearly see in this idea, in connection with the preceding 
ideas, that the two angles of this triangle are necessarily acute, 
and that these two acute angles are exactly equal to one right 
angle, neither more nor less — I see nothing contingent and mu- 
table, and consequently, the ideas that represent to me these 
truths are eternal. Were there not in nature a single equilateral 
or right-angled triangle, or any triangle whatever, every thing 
that I have just considered would remain always true and indu- 
bitable. In fact, I am not sure of having ever seen an equilateral 
or rectilineal triangle. Neither the rule nor the dividers could 
assure me that any human hand, however skilful, could ever make 
a line exactly straight, or sides and angles perfectly equal to each 
other. In strictness, we should only need a microscope, in order, 
not to understand, but to see at a glance, that the lines which we 
trace deviate from straightness, and differ in length. We have 
never seen, then, any but imperfect images of equilateral, recti- 
lineal, or isosceles triangles, since they neither exist in nature, nor 
can be constructed by art. Nevertheless, what we see of the na- 
ture and the properties of a triangle, independently of every 
existing triangle, is certain and indubitable. Place an under- 
standing in any given time, or at any point in eternity, thus to 
speak, and it will see these truths equally manifest ; they are, 
therefore, eternal. Since the understanding does not give being 
to truth, but is only employed in perceiving truth, it follows, that 
were every created understanding destroyed, these truths would 
immutably subsist. . . ." 

Chap, xxxvii. " Since there is nothing eternal, immutable, in- 
dependent, but God alone, we must conclude that these truths do 
not subsist in themselves, but in God alone, and in his eternal 
ideas, which are nothing else than himself. 

" There are those who, in order to verify these eternal truths 
which we have proposed, and others of the same nature, have 
figured to themselves eternal essences aside from deity — a pure 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 93 

illusion, which comes from not understanding that in God, as in 
the source of being, and in his understanding, where resides the 
art of making and ordering all things, are found primitive ideas, 
or as St. Augustine says, the eternally subsisting reasons of 
things. Thus, in the thought of the architect is the primitive 
idea of a house which he perceives in himself; this intellectual 
house would not be destroyed by any ruin of houses built ac- 
cording to this interior model ; and if the architect were eternal, 
the idea and the reason of the house would also be eternal. But, 
without recurring to the mortal architect, there is an immortal 
architect, or rather a primitive eternally subsisting art in the im- 
mutable thought of God, where all order, all measure, all rule, all 
proportion, all reason, in a word, all truth are found in their 
origin. 

" These eternal verities which our ideas represent, are the true 
object of science ; and this is the reason why Plato, in order to 
render us truly wise, continually reminds us of these ideas, 
wherein is seen, not what is formed, but what is, not what is be- 
gotten and is corrupt, what appears and vanishes, what is made 
and defective, but what eternally subsists. It is this intellectual 
world which that divine philosopher has put in the mind of God 
before the world was constructed, which is the immutable model 
of that great work. These are the simple, eternal, immutable, 
unbegotten, incorruptible ideas to which he refers us, in order to 
understand truth. This is what has made him say that our 
ideas, images of the divine ideas, were also immediately derived 
from the divine ideas, and did not come by the senses, which 
serve very well, said he, to awaken them, but not to form them 
in our mind. For if, without having ever seen any thing eternal, 
we have so clear an idea of eternity, that is to say, of being that 
is always the same ; if, without having perceived a perfect trian- 
gle, we understand it distinctly, and demonstrate so many incon- 
testable truths concerning it, it is a mark that these ideas do not 
come from our senses." 



94: 



LECTURE FOURTH. 



Treatise on the Knowledge of God and Self} Chap, iv., sect. 
5. Intelligence has for its object eternal truths, which are nothing 
else than God himself in ivhom they are always subsisting and 
perfectly understood. 

"... We have already remarked that the understanding has 
eternal verities for its object. The standards by which we meas- 
ure all things are eternal and invariable. We know clearly that 
every thing in the universe is made according to proportion, from 
the greatest to the least, from the strongest to the weakest, and 
we know it well enough to understand that these proportions are 
related to the principles of eternal truth. All that is demon- 
strated in mathematics, and in any other science whatever, is 
eternal and immutable, since the effect of the demonstration is to 
show that the thing cannot be otherwise than as it is demon- 
strated to be. So, in order to understand the nature and the 
properties of things which I know, for example, a triangle, a 
square, a circle, or the relations of these figures, and all other 
figures, to each other, it is not necessary that I should find such 
in nature, and I may be sure that I have never traced, never 
seen, any that are perfect. Neither is it necessary that I should 
think that there is motion in the world in order to understand 
the nature of motion itself, or that of the lines which every mo- 
tion describes, and the hidden proportions according to which it 
is developed. When the idea of these things is once awakened 
in my mind, I know that, whether they have an actual existence 
or not, so they must be, that it is impossible for them to be of 
another nature, or to be made in a different way. To come to 
something that concerns us more nearly, I mean by these princi- 
ples of eternal truth, that they do not depend on human exist- 
ence, that, so far as he is capable of reasoning, it is the essential 
duty of man to live according to reason, and to search for his 
maker, through fear of lacking the recognition of his maker, 

1 The best, or, rather, only good edition is that which was published from 
an authentic copy, in 1846, by Lecoffrc. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 95 

if in fault of searching for him, he should be ignorant of him. 
All these truths, and all those which I deduce from them by sure 
reasoning, subsist independently of all time. In whatever time 
I place a human understanding, it will know them, but in know- 
in o- them it will find them truths, it will not make them such, for 
our cognitions do not make their objects, but suppose them. So 
these truths subsist before all time, before the existence of a 
human understanding : and were every thing that is made accord- 
ing to the laws of proportion, that is to say, every thing that I see 
in nature, destroyed except myself, these laws would be preserved 
in my thought, and I should clearly see that they would always 
be good and always true, were I also destroyed with the rest. 

" If I seek how, where, and in what subject they subsist eter- 
nal and immutable, as they are, I am obliged to avow the exist- 
ence of a being in whom truth is eternally subsisting, in whom 
it is always understood ; and this being must be truth itself, and 
must be all truth, and from him it is that truth is derived in 
every thing that exists and has understanding out of him. 

" It is, then, in him, in a certain manner, who is incomprehen- 
sible 1 to me, it is in him, I say, that I see these eternal truths ; 
and to see them is to turn to him who is immutably all truth, 
and to receive his light. 

"This eternal object is God eternally subsisting, eternally true, 
eternally truth itself. ... It is in this eternal that these eternal 
truths subsist. It is also by this that I see them. All other 
men see them as well as myself, and we see them always the 
same, and as having existed before us. For we know that we 
have commenced, and we know that these truths have always 
been. Thus we see them in a light superior to ourselves, and it 
is in this superior light that we see whether we act well or ill, 
that is to say, whether we act according to these constitutive 
principles of our being or not. In that, then, we see, with all 



1 These words, d'une certaine maniere qui rrCest incomprehensible, e'est en 
lui, dis-je, are not in the first edition of lf22. 



yb LECTURE FOURTH. 

other truths, the invariable rules of our conduct, and we see that 
there are things in regard to which duty is indispensable, and 
that in things which are naturally indifferent, the true duty is to 
accommodate ourselves to the greatest good of society. A well- 
disposed man conforms to the civil laws, as he conforms to cus- 
tom. But he listens to an inviolable law in himself, which says 
to him that he must do wrong to no one, that it is better to be 
injured than to injure. . . . The man who sees these truths, by 
these truths judges himself, and condemns himself when he errs. 
Or, rather, these truths judge him, since they do not accommo- 
date themselves to human judgments, but human judgments are 
accommodated to them. And the man judges rightly when, 
feeling these judgments to be variable in their nature, he gives 
them for a rule these eternal verities. 

"These eternal verities which every understanding always per- 
ceives the same, by which every understanding is governed, are 
something of God, or rather, are God himself. . . . 

"Truth must somewhere be very perfectly understood, and 
man is to himself an indubitable proof of this. For, whether he 
considers himself or extends his vision to the beings that surround 
him, he sees every thing subjected to certain laws, and to immu- 
table rules of truth. He sees that he understands these laws, at 
least in part, — he who has neither made himself, nor any part of 
the universe, however small, and he sees that nothing could have 
been made had not these laws been elsewhere perfectly understood ; 
and he sees that it is necessary to recognize an eternal wisdom 
wherein all law, all order, all proportion, have their primitive 
reason. For it is absurd to suppose that there is so much sequence 
in truths, so much proportion in things, so much economy in 
their arrangement, that is to say, in the world, and that this 
sequence, this proportion, this economy, should nowhere be under- 
stood : — and man, who has made nothing, veritably knowing these 
things, although not fully knowing them, must judge that there 
is some one who knows them in their perfection, and that this is 
he who has made all things.*. . ." 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 97 

Sect. 6 is wholly Cartesian. Bossuet there demonstrates that 
the soul knows by the imperfection of its own intelligence that 
there is elsewhere a perfect intelligence. 

In sect. 9, Bossuet elucidates anew the relation of truth to God. 

" Whence comes to my intelligence this impression, so pure, of 
truth ? Whence come to it those immutable rules that govern 
reasoning, that form manners, by which it discovers the secret 
proportions of figures and of movements ? Whence come to it, 
in a word, those eternal truths which I have considered so much ? 
Do the triangles, the squares, the circles, that I rudely trace on 
paper, impress upon my mind their proportions and their rela- 
tions ? Or are there others whose perfect trueness produces this 
effect ? Where have I seen these circles and these triangles so 
true, — I who am not sure of ever having seen a perfectly regular 
figure, and, nevertheless, understand this regularity so perfectly ? 
Are there somewhere, either in the world or out of the world, 
triangles or circles existing with this perfect regularity, whereby 
it could be impressed upon my mind ? And do these rules of 
reasoning and conduct also exist in some place, whence they com- 
municate to me their immutable truth ? Or, indeed, is it not 
rather he who has everywhere extended measure, proportion, 
truth itself, that impresses on my mind the certain idea of them ? 
... It is, then, necessary to understand that the soul, made in 
the image of God, capable of understanding truth, which is God 
himself, actually turns towards its original, that is to say, towards 
God, where the truth appears to it as soon as God wills to make 
the truth appear to it. . . . It is an astonishing thing that man 
understands so many truths, without understanding at the same 
time that all truth comes from God, that it is in God, that it is 
God himself. ... It is certain that God is the primitive reason 
of all that exists and has understanding in the universe ; that he 
is the true original, and that every thing is true by relation to 
his eternal idea, that seeking truth is seeking him, and that finding 
truth is finding him. . . ." 

Chap, v., sect. 14. "The senses do not convey to the soul 

5 



98 LECTURE FOURTH. 

knowledge of truth. They excite it, awaken it, and apprize it of 
certain effects : it is sojicited to search for causes, but it discovers 
them, it sees their connections, the principles which put them in 
motion, only in a superior light that comes from God, or is God 
himself. God is, then, truth, which is always the same to all 
minds, and the true source of intelligence. For this reason intel- 
ligence beholds the light, breathes, and lives." 

At the close of the seventeenth century, Leibnitz comes to 
crown these great testimonies, and to complete their unanimity. 

Here is a passage from an important treatise entitled, Medita- 
tiones de Cognitione, Veritate et Idceis, in which Leibnitz declares 
that primary notions are the attributes of God. " I know not," 
he says, "whether man can perfectly account to himself for his 
ideas, except by ascending to primary ideas for which he can no 
more account, that is to say, to the absolute attributes of God." 1 

The same doctrine is in the Principia Philosophic seu Theses 
in Graticm Principis Eugenii. " The intelligence of God is the 
region of eternal truths, and the ideas that depend upon them." 2 

Theodicea, part ii., sect. 189. 3 "It must not be said with the 
Scotists that eternal truths would subsist if there were no under- 
standing, not even that of God. For, in my opinion, it is the 
divine understanding that makes the reality of eternal truths." 

Nouveaux Essais sur V Entendement Humain, book ii., chap, 
xvii. "The idea of the absolute is in us internally like that of 
being. These absolutes are nothing else than the attributes of God, 
and it may be said they are just as much the source of ideas as 
God is in himself the principle of beings." 

Ibid., book iv., chap. xi. "But it will be demanded where 
those ideas would be if no mind existed, and what would then 
become of the real foundation of this certainty of eternal truths ? 
That brings us in fine to the last foundation of truths, to wit, to 
that supreme and universal mind which cannot be destitute of 

1 Lcibnitz'd Opera, edit. Dcutcns, vol. ii., p. 17. 2 Ibid., p. 24. 
s 1st (Million, Amsterdam, 1710, p. 354, edit, of M. de Jaucourt, Amster- 
dam, 1747, vol. ii., p. 98. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 99 

existence, whose understanding, to speak truly, is the region of 
eternal truths, as St. Augustine saw and clearly enough expressed 
it. And that it may not be thought necessary to recur to it, we 
must consider that these necessary truths contain the determina- 
ting reason and the regulative principle of existences themselves, 
and, in a word, the laws of the universe. So these unnecessary 
truths, being anterior to the existences of contingent beings, must 
have their foundation in the existence of a necessary substance. 
It is there that I find the original of truths which are stamped 
upon our souls,«not in the form of propositions, but as sources, 
the application and occasions of which will produce actual enun- 
ciations." 

So, from Plato to Leibnitz, the greatest metaphysicans have 
thought that absolute truth is an attribute of absolute being. 
Truth is incomprehensible without God, as God is incomprehen- 
sible without truth. Truth is placed between human intelligence 
and the supreme intelligence, as a kind of mediator. In the low- 
est degree, as well as at the height of being, God is everywhere 
met, for truth is everywhere. Study nature, elevate yourselves to 
the laws that govern it and make of it as it were a living truth : 
— the more profoundly you understand its laws, the nearer you 
approach to God. Study, above all, humanity ; humanity is much 
greater than nature, for it comes from God as well as nature, and 
knows him, while nature is ignorant of him. Especially seek and 
love truth, and refer it to the immortal being who is its source. 
The more you know of the truth, the more you know of God. The 
sciences, so far from turning us away from religion, conduct us to 
it. Physics, with their laws, mathematics, with their sublime 
ideas, especially philosophy, which cannot take a single step 
without encountering universal and necessary principles, are so 
many stages on the way to Deity, and, thus to speak, so many 
temples in which homage is perpetually paid to him. 

But in the midst of these high considerations, let us carefully 
guard ourselves against two opposite errors, from which men of 
fine genius have not always known how to preserve themselves, 



100 LECTURE FOURTH. 

— against the error of making the reason of man purely individ- 
ual, and against the error of confounding it with truth and the 
divine reason. 1 If the reason of man is purely individual because 
it is in the individual, it can comprehend nothing that is not indi- 
vidual, nothing that transcends the limits wherein it is confined. 
Not only is it unable to elevate itself to any universal and neces- 
sary truth, not only is it unable to have any idea of it, even any 
suspicion of it, as one blind from his birth can have no suspicion 
that a sun exists ; but there is no power, not even that of God, 
that by any means could make penetrate the reason of man any 
truth of that order absolutely repugnant to its nature ; since, for 
this end, it would not be sufficient for God to lighten our mind ; 
it would be necessary to change it, to add to it another faculty. 
Neither, on the other hand, must we, with Malebrancb':, make 
the reason of man to such a degree impersonal that it takes the 
place of truth which is its object, and of God who is its principle. 
It is truth that to us is absolutely impersonal, and not reason. 
Reason is in man, yet it comes from God. Hence it is individual 
and finite, whilst its root is in the infinite ; it is personal by its 



1 We have many times designated these two rocks, for example, 2d Series, 
vol. i., lecture 5, p. 92: — "One cannot help smiling when, in our times, he 
hears individual reason spoken against. In truth it is a great waste of decla- 
mation, for the reason is not individual ; if it were, we should govern it as 
we govern our resolutions and our volitions, we could at any moment change 
its acts, that is to say, our conceptions. If these conceptions were merely 
individual, we should not think of imposing them upon another individual, 
for to impose our own individual and personal conceptions on another indi- 
vidual, on another person, would be the most extravagant despotism. . . . 
We call those mad who do not admit the relations of numbers, the difference 
between the beautiful and the ugly, the just and the unjust. Why ? Because 
we know that it is not the individual that constitutes these conceptions, or, 
in other terms, we know that the reason has something universal and abso- 
lute, that upon this ground it obligates all individuals ; and an individual, 
at the same time that he knows that he himself is obligated by it, knows 
that all others are obligated by it on the same ground." — Ibid., p. 93: 
" Truth misconceived is thereby neither altered nor destroyed ; it subsists 
independently of the reason that perceives it or perceives it ill. Truth in 
itself is independent of our reason. Its true subject is the universal and ab- 
solute reason." 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF PRINCIPLES. 101 

relation to the person in which it resides, and must also possess I 
know not what character of universality, of necessity even, in 
order to be capable of conceiving universal and necessary truths ; 
hence it seems, by turns, according to the point of view from 
which it is regarded, pitiable and sublime. Truth is in some sort 
lent to human reason, but it belongs to a totally different reason, 
to wit, that supreme, eternal, uncreated reason, which is God 
himself. The truth in us is nothing else than our object ; in God, 
it is one of his attributes, as well as justice, holiness, mercy, as we 
shall subsequently see. God exists ; and so far as he exists, he 
thinks, and his thoughts are truths, eternal as himself, which are 
reflected in the laws of the universe, which the reason of man has 
received the power to attain. Truth is the offspring, the utter- 
ance, I was about to say, the eternal word of God, if it is per- 
mitted philosophy to borrow this divine language from that holy 
religion which teaches us to worship God in spirit and in truth. 
Of old, the theory of Ideas, which manifest God to men, and 
remind them of him, had given to Plato the surname of the pre- 
cursor ; on account of that theory of Ideas he was dear to St. 
Augustine, and is invoked by Bossuet. It is by this same theory, 
wisely interpreted, and purified by the light of our age, that the 
new philosophy is attached to the tradition of great philosophies, 
and to that of Christianity. 

The last problem that the science of the true presented is re- 
solved : — we are in possession of the basis of absolute truths. 
God is substance, reason, supreme cause, and the unity of all these 
truths ; God, and God alone, is to us the boundary beyond which 
we have nothing more to seek. 



LECTUEE Y. 



ON MYSTICISM. 



Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and mysticism. Mysti- 
cism consists in pretending to know God without an intermediary. — Two 
sorts of mysticism. — Mysticism of sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two 
sensibilities — the one external, the other internal, and corresponding to 
the soul as external sensibility corresponds to nature. — Legitimate part of 
sentiment. — Its aberrations. — Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus : God, or 
absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by pure thought. — 
Ecstasy. — Mixture of superstition and abstraction in mysticism. — Conclu- 
sion of the first part of the course.. 

Whether we turn our attention to the forces and the laws 
that animate and govern matter without belonging to it, or as 
the order of our labors calls us to do, reflect upon the universal 
and necessary truths which our mind discovers but does not con- 
stitute, the least systematic use of reason makes us naturally 
conclude from the forces and laws of the universe that there is a 
first intelligent mover, and from necessary truths that there is a 
necessary being who alone is their substance. We do not per- 
ceive God, but we conceive him, upon the faith of this admirable 
world exposed to our view, and upon that of this other world, 
more admirable still, which we bear in ourselves. By this double 
road we succeed in going to God. This natural course is that of 
all men : it must be sufficient for a sound philosophy. But there 
are feeble and presumptuous minds that do not know how to go 
thus far, or do not know how to stop there. Confined to experi- 
ence, they do not dare to conclude from what they see in what 
they do not see, as if at all times, at the sight of the first phenom- 
enon that appears to their eyes, they did not admit that this 



OX MYSTICISM. 103 

phenomenon has a cause, even when this cause does not come 
within the reach of their senses. They do not perceive it, yet 
they believe in it, for the simple reason that they necessarily con- 
::. Man and the universe are also facts that cannot but 
have a cause, although this cause may neither be seen by our 
eyes nor touched by our hands. Reason has been given us for 
the very purpose of going, and without any circuit of reasoning, 
from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to the infinite, 
from the imperfect to the perfect, and also, from necessary and 
universal truths, which surround us on every side, to their eternal 
and necessary principle. Such is the natural and legitimate 
bearing of reason. It possesses an evidence of which it renders 
no account, and is not thereby less irresistible to whomsoever does 
not undertake to contest with God the veracity of the faculties 
which he has received. But one does not revolt against reason 
with impunity. It punishes our false wisdom by giving us up to 
extravagance. When one has confined himself to the narrow 
limits of what he directly perceives, he is smothered by these 
limits, wishes to go out of them at any price, and invokes some 
other means of knowing : he did not dare to admit the existence 
of an invisible God, and now behold him aspiring to enter into 
immediate communication with him, as with sensible objects, and 
the objects of consciousness. It is an extreme feebleness for a 
rational being thus to doubt reason, and it is an incredible rash- 
::i this despair of intelligence, to dream of direct communi- 
cation with God. This desperate and ambitious dreani is mys- 
ticism. 

It behooves us to separate with care this chimera, that is not 
without danger, from the cause that we defend. It behooves us 
so much the more to openly break with mysticism, as it seems to 
touch us more nearly, as it pretends to be the last word of phi- 
losophy, and as by an appearance of greatness it is able to seduce 
many a noble soul, especially at one of those epochs of lassitude, 
when, after the cruel disappointment of excessive hopes, human 
reason, having lost faith in its own power without having lost the 



104 LECTURE FIFTH. 

need of God, in order to satisfy this immortal need, addresses 
itself to every thing except itself, and in fault of knowing how 
to go to God by the way that is open to it, throws itself out of 
common sense, and tries the new, the chimerical, even the ab- 
surd, in order to attain the impossible. 

Mysticism contains a pusillanimous skepticism in the place of 
reason, and, at the same time, a faith blind and carried even to 
the oblivion of all the conditions imposed upon human nature. 
To conceive God under the transparent veil of the universe and 
above the highest truths, is at once too much and too little for 
mysticism. It does not believe that it knows God, if it knows 
him only in his manifestations and by the signs of his existence : 
it wishes to perceive him directly, it wishes to be united to him, 
sometimes by sentiment, sometimes by some other extraordinary 
process. 

Sentiment plays so important a part in mysticism, that our 
first care must be to investigate the nature and proper function 
of this interesting and hitherto ill-studied part of human nature. 

It is necessary to distinguish sentiment well from sensation. 
There are, in some sort, two sensibilities : one is directed to the 
external world, and is charged with transmitting to the soul the 
impressions that it sees ; the other is wholly interior, and is re- 
lated to the soul as the other is to nature, — its function is to re- 
ceive the impression, and, as it were, the rebound of what passes 
in the soul. Have we discovered any truth ? there is something 
in us which feels joy on account of it. Have we performed a 
good action ? we receive our reward in a feeling of satisfaction 
less vivid, but more delicate and more durable than all the agree- 
able sensations that come from the body. It seems as if intelli- 
gence also had its intimate organ, which suffers or enjoys, accord- 
ing to the state of the intelligence. We bear in ourselves a 
profound source of emotion, at once physical and moral, which 
expresses the union of our two natures. The animal does not 
go beyond sensation, and pure thought belongs only to the an- 
gelic nature. The sentiment that partakes of sensation and 



ON MYSTICISM. 105 

thought is the portion of humanity. Sentiment is, it is true, only 
an echo of reason ; but this echo is sometimes better understood 
than reason itself, because it resounds in the most intimate, the 
most delicate portions of the soul, and moves the entire man. 

It is a singular, but incontestable fact, that as soon as reason 
has conceived truth, the soul attaches itself to it, and loves it. 
Yes, the soul loves truth. It is a wonderful thing that a being 
strayed into one corner of the universe, alone charged with sus- 
taining himself against so many obstacles, who, it would seem, 
has enough to do to think of himself, to preserve and somewhat 
embellish his life, is capable of loving what is not related to 
him, and exists only in an invisible world ! This disinterested 
love of truth gives evidence of the greatness of him who feels it. 

Reason takes one step more : — it is not contented with truth, 
even absolute truth, when convinced that it possesses it ill, that it 
does not possess it as it really is ; as long as it has not placed it 
upon its eternal basis ; having arrived there, it stops as before its 
impassable barrier, having nothing more to seek, nothing more to 
find. Sentiment follows reason, to which it is attached ; it stops, 
it rests, only in the love of the infinite being. 

In fact, it is the infinite that we love, while we believe that we 
are loving finite things, even while loving truth, beauty, virtue. 
And so surely is it the infinite itself that attracts and charms us, 
that its highest manifestations do not satisfy us until we have re- 
ferred them to their immortal source. The heart is insatiable, 
because it aspires after the infinite. This sentiment, this need of 
the infinite, is at the foundation of the greatest passions, and the 
most trifling desires. A sigh of the soul in the presence of the 
starry heavens, the melancholy attached to the passion of glory, 
to ambition, to all the great emotions of the soul, express it better 
without doubt, but they do not express it more than the caprice 
and mobility of those vulgar loves, wandering from object to object 
in a perpetual circle of ardent desires, of poignant disquietudes, 
and mournful disenchantments. 

Let us designate another relation between reason and sentiment. 
5* 



106 LECTURE FIFTH. 

The mind at first precipitates itself towards its object without 
rendering to itself an account of what it does, of what it perceives, 
of what it feels. But, with the faculty of thinking, of feeling, it 
has also that of willing ; it possesses the liberty of returning to 
itself, of reflecting on its own thought and sentiment, of consenting 
to this, or of resisting it, of abstaining from it, or of reproducing 
its thought and sentiment, while stamping them with a new char- 
acter. Spontaneity, reflection, — these are the two great forms of 
intelligence. 1 One is not the other ; but, after all, the latter does 
little more than develop the former ; they contain at bottom the 
same things : — the point of view alone is different. Every thing 
that is spontaneous is obscure and confused ; reflection carries with 
it a clear and distinct view. 

Eeason does not begin by reflection ; it does not at first per- 
ceive the truth as universal and necessary ; consequently, when 
it passes from idea to being, when it refers truth to the real being 
that is its subject, it has not sounded, it even has no suspicion of 
the depth of the chasm it passes ; it passes it by means of the 
power which is in it, but it is not astonished at what it has done. 
It is subsequently astonished, and undertakes by the aid of the 
liberty with which it is endowed, to do the opposite of what it 
has done, to deny what it has affirmed. Here commences the 
strife between sophism and common sense, between false science 
and natural truth, between good and bad philosophy, both of 
which come from free reflection. The sad and sublime privilege 
of reflection is error; but reflection is the remedy for the evil it 
produces. If it can deny natural truth, usually it confirms it, re- 
turns to common sense by a longer or shorter circuit; it opposes 
in vain all the tendencies of human nature, by which it is almost 
always overcome, and brought back submissive to the first inspi- 
rations of reason, fortified by this trial. But there is nothing 
more in the end than there was at the beginning ; only in prim- 
itive inspiration there was a power which was ignorant of itself, 

1 See the preceding lectures. 



ON MYSTICISM. 107 

and in the legitimate results of reflection there is a power which 
knows itself: — one is the triumph of instinct, the other, that of 
true science. 

Sentiment which accompanies intelligence in all its proceedings 
presents the same phenomena. 

The heart, like reason, pursues the infinite, and the only dif- 
ference there is in these pursuits is, that sometimes the heart 
seeks the infinite without knowing that it seeks it, and sometimes 
it renders to itself an account of the final end of the need of loving 
what disturbs it. When reflection is added to love, if it finds 
that the object loved is in fact worth y of being loved, far from 
enfeebling love, it strengthens it ; far from clipping its divine 
wings, it develops them, and nourishes them, as Plato 1 says. But 
if the object of love is only a symbol of the true beauty, only 
capable of exciting the desire of the soul without satisfying it, 
reflection breaks the charm which held the heart, dissipates the 
chimera that enchained it. It must be very sure in regard to its 
attachments, in order to dare to put them to the proof of reflec- 
tion. Psyche ! Psyche ! preserve thy good fortune ; do not 
sound the mystery too deeply. Take care not to bring the fear- 
ful light near the invisible lover with whom thy soul is enamored. 
At the first ray of the fatal lamp love is awakened, and flies away. 
Charming image of what takes place in the soul, when to the 
serene and unsuspecting confidence of sentiment succeeds reflection 
with its bitter train. This is perhaps also the meaning of the 
biblical account of the tree of knowledge. 2 Before science and 
reflection are innocence and faith. Science and reflection at first 
engender doubt, disquietude, distaste for what one possesses, the 
disturbed pursuit of what one knows not, troubles of mind and 
soul, sore travail of thought, and, in life, many faults, until inno- 
cence, forever lost, is replaced by virtue, simple faith by true 

1 See the Phcedrus and the Banquet, vol. vii. of our translation. 

3 We shall not be accused of perverting the holy Scriptures by these anal- 
ogies, for we give them only as analogies, and St. Augustine and Bossuet are 
full of such. 



108 LECTURE FIFTH. 

science, until love, through so many vanishing illusions, finally 
succeeds in reaching its true object. 

Spontaneous love has the native grace of ignorance and happi- 
ness. Reflective love is very different ; it is serious, it is great, 
even in its faults, with the greatness of liberty. Let us not be in 
haste to condemn reflection : if it often produces egotism, it also 
produces devotion. What, in fact, is self-devotion ? It is giving 
ourselves freely, with full knowledge of what we are doing. 
Therein consists the sublimity of love, love worthy of a noble and 
generous creature, not an ignorant and blind love. When affec- 
tion has conquered selfishness, instead of loving its object for its 
own sake, the soul gives itself to its object, and miracle of love, 
the more it gives the more it possesses, nourishing itself by its 
own sacrifices, and finding its strength and its joy in its entire 
self-abandonment. But there is only one being who is worthy 
of being thus loved, and who can be thus loved without illusions, 
and without mistakes, at once without limits, and without regret, 
to wit, the perfect being who alone does not fear reflection, who 
alone can fill the entire capacity of our heart. 

Mysticism corrupts sentiment by exaggerating its power. 

Mysticism begins by suppressing in man reason, or, at least, it 
subordinates and sacrifices reason to sentiment. 

Listen to mysticism : it says that by the heart alone is man in 
relation with God. All that is great, beautiful, infinite, eternal, 
love alone reveals to us. Reason is only a lying faculty. Be- 
cause it may err, and does err, it is said that it always errs. 
Reason is confounded with every thing that it is not. The errors 
of the senses, and of reasoning, the illusions of the imagination, 
even the extravagances of passion, which sometimes give rise to 
those of mind, every thing is laid to the charge of reason. Its 
imperfections are triumphed over, its miseries are complacently 
exhibited ; the most audacious dogmatical system — since it aspires 
to put man and God in immediate communication — borrows 
against reason all the arms of skepticism. 



ON MYSTICISM. 109 

Mysticism goes farther : it attacks liberty itself; it orders lib- 
erty to renounce itself, in order to identify itself by love with him 
from whom the infinite separates us. The ideal of virtue is no 
longer the courageous perseverance of the good man, who, in 
struggling against temptation and suffering, makes life holy ; it. 
is no longer the free and enlightened devotion of a loving soul ; 
it is the entire and blind abandonment of ourselves, of our will, of 
our being, in a barren contemplation of thought, in a prayer 
without utterance, and almost without consciousness. 

The source of mysticism is in that incomplete view of human 
nature, which knows not how to discern in it what therein is- most 
profound, which betakes itself to what is therein most striking, 
most seizing, and, consequently, also most seizable. We have 
already said that reason is not noisy, and often is not heard, 
whilst its echo of sentiment loudly resounds. In this compound 
phenomenon, it is natural that the most apparent element should 
cover and dim the most obscure. 

Moreover, what relations, what deceptive resemblances between 
these two faculties ! "Without doubt, in their development, they 
manifestly differ ; when reason becomes reasoning, one easily dis- 
tinguishes its heavy movement from the flight of sentiment ; but 
spontaneous reason is almost confounded with sentiment, — there 
is the same rapidity, the same obscurity. Add that they pursue 
the same object, and almost always go together. It is not, then, 
astonishing that they should be confounded. 

A wise philosophy distinguishes 1 them without separating 
them. Analysis demonstrates that reason precedes, and that 
sentiment follows. How can we love what we are ignorant of? 
In order to enjoy the truth, is it not necessary to know it more 
or less ? In order to be moved by certain ideas, is it not neces- 
sary to have possessed them in some degree ? To absorb reason 

1 See part ii., The Beautiful, lecture. 6, and part, iii., lecture 13, on. the 
Morals of Sentiment. See also our Pascal, preface of the last edition, p. 8, 
etc., vol. i. of the 4th Series. 



110 LECTURE FIFTH. 

in sentiment is to stifle the cause in the effect. When one speaks 
of the light of the heart, he designates, without knowing it, that 
light of the spontaneous reason which discovers to us truth by a 
pure and immediate intuition entirely opposite to the slow and 
laborious processes of the reflective reason and reasoning. 

Sentiment by itself is a source of emotion, not of knowledge. 
The sole faculty of knowledge is reason. At bottom, if senti- 
ment is different from sensation, it nevertheless pertains on all 
sides to general sensibility, and it is, like it, variable ; it has, like 
it, its interruptions, its vivacity, and its lassitude, its exaltation 
and its short-comings. The inspirations of sentiment, then, 
which are essentially mobile and individual, cannot be raised to 
a universal and absolute rule. It is not so with reason ; it is 
constantly the same in each one of us, the same in all men. The 
laws that govern its exercise constitute the common legislation of 
all intelligent beings. There is no intelligence that does not 
conceive some universal and necessary truth, and, consequently, 
the infinite being who is its principle. These grand objects 
being once known excite in the souls of all men the emotions 
that we have endeavored to describe. These emotions partake 
of the dignity of reason and the mobility of imagination and 
sensibility. Sentiment is the harmonious and living relation be- 
tween reason and sensibility. Suppress one of the two terms, 
and what becomes of the relation ? Mysticism pretends to ele- 
vate man directly to God, and does not see that in depriving 
reason of its power, it really deprives him of that which makes 
him know God, and puts him in a just communication with God 
by the intermediary of eternal and infinite truth. 

The fundamental error of mysticism is, that it discards this in- 
termediary, as if it were a barrier and not a tie : it makes the 
infinite being the direct object of love. But such a love can be 
sustained only by superhuman efforts that end in folly. Love 
tends to unite itself with its object : mysticism absorbs love in its 
object. Hence the extravagances of that mysticism so severely 
and so justly condemned by Bossuet and the Church in quiet- 



ON MYSTICISM. Ill 

ism. 1 Quietism lulls to sleep the activity of man, extinguishes 
his intelligence, substitutes indolent and irregular contemplation 
for the seeking of truth and the fulfilment of duty. The true 
union of the soul with God is made by truth and virtue. Every 
other union is a chimera, a peril, sometimes a crime. It is not 
permitted man to reject, under any pretext, that which makes 
him man, that which renders him capable of comprehending God, 
and expressing in himself an imperfect image of God, that is to 
say, reason, liberty, conscience. Without doubt, virtue has its 
prudence, and if we must never yield to passion, there are diverse 
ways of combating it in order to conquer it. One can let it sub- 
side, and resignation and silence may have their legitimate em- 
ployment. There is a portion of truth, of utility even, in the 
Spiritual Letters, even in the Maxims of the Saints. But, in 
general, it is unsafe to anticipate in this world the prerogatives 
of death, and to dream of sanctity when virtue alone is required 
of us, when virtue is so difficult to attain, even imperfectly. The 
best quietism can, at most, be only a halt in the course, a truce 
in the strife, or rather another manner of combating. It is not 
by flight that battles are gained ; in order to gain them it is 
necessary to come to an engagement, so much the more as duty 
consists in combating still more than in conquering. Of the 
two opposite extremes — stoicism and quietism — the first, taken 
all in all, is preferable to the second ; for if it does not always 
elevate man to God, it maintains, at least, human personality, 
liberty, conscience, whilst quietism, in abolishing these, abolishes 
the entire man. Oblivion of life and its duties, inertness, sloth, 
death of soul, — such are the fruits of that love of God, which is 
lost in the sterile contemplation of its object, provided it does not 
cause still sadder aberrations ! There comes a moment when 
the soul that believes itself united with God, puffed up with this 
imaginary possession, despises both the body and human person- 
ality to such an extent that all its actions become indifferent to 

1 See the admirable work of Bossuet, Instruction sur lea Hots <T Oration. 



112 LECTURE FIFTH. 

it, and good and evil are in its eyes the same. Thus it is that 
fanatical sects have been seen mingling crime and devotion, find- 
ing in one the excuse, often even the motive, of the other, and 
prefacing infamous irregularities or abominable cruelties with 
mystic transports, — deplorable consequences of the chimera of 
pure love, of the pretension of sentiment to rule over reason, to 
serve alone as a guide to the human soul, and to put itself in 
direct communication with God, without the intermediary of the 
visible world, and without the still surer intermediary of intelli- 
gence and truth. 

But it is time to pass to another kind of mysticism, more sin- 
gular, more learned, more refined, and quite as unreasonable, al- 
though it presents itself in the very name of reason. 

We have seen 1 that reason, if one of the principles which gov- 
ern it be destroyed, cannot lay hold of truth, not even absolute 
truths of the intellectual and moral order ; it refers all universal, 
necessary, absolute truths, to the being that alone can explain 
them, because in him alone are necessary and absolute existence, 
immutability, and infinity. God is the substance of uncreated 
truths, as he is the cause of created existences. Necessary truths 
find in God their natural subject. If God has not arbitrarily 
made them, — which is not in accordance with their essence and 
his, — he constitutes them, inasmuch as they are himself. His 
intelligence possesses them as the manifestations of itself. As 
long as our intelligence has not referred them to the divine intel- 
ligence, they are to it an effect without cause, a phenomenon 
without substance. It refers them, then, to their cause and their 
substance. And in that it obeys an imperative need, a fixed 
principle of reason. 

Mysticism breaks in some sort the ladder that elevates us to 
infinite substance : it regards this substance alone, independent- 
ly 2 of the truth that manifests it, and it imagines itself to possess 

1 Lecture 4. 

a See especially in our writings the regular and detailed refutation of the 
double extravagance of considering substance apart from its determinations 



OX MYSTICISM. 113 

also the pure absolute, pure unity, being in itself. The advan- 
tage which mysticism here seeks, is to give to thought an object 
wherein there is no mixture, no division, no multiplicity, wherein 
every sensible and human element has entirely disappeared. But 
in order to obtain this advantage, it must pay the cost of it. It 
is a very simple means of freeing theodicea from every shade of 
anthropomorphism ; it is reducing God to an abstraction, to the 
abstraction of being in itself. Being in itself, it is true, is free 
from all division, but upon the condition that it have no attribute, 
no quality, and even that it be deprived of knowledge and intel- 
ligence ; for intelligence, if elevated as it might be, always sup- 
• ises the distinction between the intelligent subject and the in- 
telligible object. A God from whom absolute tmity excludes 
intelligence, is the God of the mystic philosophy. 



and its qualities, or of considering its qualities and its faculties apart from 
the being that possesses them. 1st Series, vol. iii.. lecture S, On CondiUac, 
and vol. v., lectures 5 and 6, On Kant. We say, the same Series, vol. iv., 
: ,; There are philosophers beyond the Ehine, who, to appear very 
profound, are not contented with qualities and phenomena, and aspire to 
pure substance, to being in itself. The problem stated as follows, is quite 
insoluble : the knowledge of such a substance is impossible, for this very 
simple reason, that such a substance does not exist. Being in itself, das 
Ding in sick, which Kant seeks, escapes him, and this does not humiliate 
Kant and philosophy ; for there is no being in itself. The human mind 
may form to itself an abstract and general idea of being, but this idea has 
no real object in nature. All being is determinate, if it is real: and to be 
determinate is to possess certain modes of being, transitory and accidental, 
or constant and essential. Knowledge of being in itself is then not merely 
interdicted to the human mind ; it is contrary to the nature of things. At 
the other extreme of metaphysics Ls a powerless psychology, which, by 
fear of a hollow ontology, is condemned to voluntary ignorance. We are 
not able, say these philosophers, Mr. Dugakl Stewart, for example, to attain 
a in itself: it is permitted us to know only phenomena and qualities: 
so that, in order not to wander in search of the substance of the soul, they 
do not dare anirm its spirituality, and devote themselves to the study of its 
different faculties. Equal error, equal chimera ! There are no more quali- 
ties without being, than being without qualities. No being is without its 
determinations, and reciprocally its determinations are not without it. To 
consider the determinations of being independently of the being which 
| — "es them, is no longer to observe; it is to abstract, to make . 
straction quite as extravagant as that of being considered independently of 
its qua! . 



114: LECTURE FIFTH. 

How could the school of Alexandria, how could Plotinus, its 
founder, 1 in the midst of the lights of the Greek and Latin civili- 
zation, have arrived at such a strange notion of the Divinity? 
By the abuse of Platonism, by the corruption of the best and 
severest method, that of Socrates and Plato. 

The Platonic method, the dialectic process, as its author calls 
it, searches in particular, variable, contingent things, for what 
they also have general, durable, one, that is to say, their Idea, 
and is thus elevated to Ideas, as to the only true objects of intel- 
ligence, in order to be elevated still from these Ideas, which are 
arranged in an admirable hierarchy, to the first of all, beyond 
which intelligence has nothing more to conceive, nothing more 
to seek. By rejecting in finite things their limit, their individu- 
ality, we attain genera, Ideas, and, by them, their sovereign prin- 
ciple. But this principle is not the last of genera, nor the last of 
abstractions ; it is a real and substantial principle. 2 The God of 
Plato is not called merely unity, he is called the Good ; he is 
not the lifeless substance of the Eleatics ; 3 he is endowed with 
life and movement ; 4 strong expressions that show how much the 
God of the Platonic metaphysics differs from that of mysticism. 
This God is the father of the world? He is also the father of 
truth, that light of spirits. 6 He dwells in the midst of Ideas 
which make him a true God inasmuch as he is with them? He 
possesses august and holy intelligence? He has made the world 

1 On the school of Alexandria, see 2d Series, vol. ii., Sketch of a General 
History of Philosophy, lecture 8, p. 211, and 3d Series, vol. i., passim. 

2 See the previous lecture. 

3 3d Series, vol. i., Ancient Philosophy, article Xenophanes, and article 
Zeno. 

* The Sophist, vol. xi. of our translation, p. 261. 

5 Timceus, vol. xii., p. 117. 6 Republic, book vii., p. 70 of vol. x. 

7 Phoidms, vol. vi., p. 55. 

8 The Sophist, p. 201, 262. The following little-known and decisive pas- 
sage, which we have translated for the first time, must be cited : — " Stranger. 
But what, by Zeus ! shall we be so easily persuaded that in reality, motion, 
life, soul, intelligence, do not belong to absolute being? that this being 
.neither lives nor thinks, that this being remains immobile, immutable, with- 
out having part in august and holy intelligence?— Theatetus. That would 



ON MYSTICISM. 115 

without any external necessity, and for the sole reason that he is 
good. 1 In fine, he is beauty without mixture, unalterable, im- 
mortal, that makes him who has caught a glimpse of it disdain 
all earthly beauties. 2 The beautiful, the absolute good, is too 
dazzling to be looked on directly by the eye of mortal ; it must 
at first be contemplated in the images that reveal it to us, in 
truth, in beauty, in justice, as they are met here below, and 
among men, as the eye of one who has been a chained captive 
from infancy, must be gradually habituated to the light of the 
sun. 3 Our reason, enlightened by true science, can perceive this 
light of spirits ; reason rightly led can go to God, and there is 
no need, in order to reach him, of a particular and mysterious 
faculty. 

Plotinus erred by pushing to excess the Platonic dialectics, and 
by extending them beyond the boundary where they should stop. 
In Plato they terminate at ideas, at the idea of the good, and 
produce an intelligent and good God ; Plotinus applies them 
without limit, and they lead him into an abyss of mysticism. If 
all truth is in the general, and if all individuality is imperfection, 
it follows, that as long as we are able to generalize, as long as it 
is possible for us to overlook any difference, to exclude any deter- 
mination, we shall not be at the limit of dialectics. Its last 
object, then, will be a principle without any determination. It 
will not spare in God being itself. In fact, if we say that God 
is a being, by the side of and above being, we place unity, of 

be consenting, dear Eleatus, to a very strange assertion. — Stranger. Or, in- 
deed, shall we accord to this being intelligence while we refuse him life ? — 
Theatetus. That cannot be. — Stranger. Or, again, shall we say that there is 
in him intelligence and life, but that it is not in a soul that he possesses them ? 
— Theatetus. And how could he possess them otherwise ? — Stranger. In 
fine, that, endowed with intelligence, soul, and life, all animated as he is, he 
remains incomplete immobility. — Theatetus. All that seems to me unrea- 
sonable." 

1 Timaius, p. 119 : " Let us say that the cause which led the supreme 
ordainer to produce and compose this universe was, that he was good." 

2 Bouquet, discourse of Diotimus, vol. vi., and the 2d part of this vol., 
The Beautiful, lecture 7. 

3 Republic. Ibid. 



116 LECTUBE FIFTH. 

which being partakes, and which it cannot disengage, in order to 
consider it alone. Being is not here simple, since it is at once 
being and unity ; unity alone is simple, for one cannot go beyond 
that. And still when we say unity, we determine it. True ab- 
solute unity must, then, be something absolutely indeterminate, 
which is not, which, properly speaking, cannot be named, the 
winamable, as Plotinus says. This principle, which exists not, 
for a still stronger reason, cannot think, for all thought is still a 
determination, a manner of being. So being and thought are 
excluded from absolute unity. If Alexandrianism admits them, 
it is only as a forfeiture, a degradation of unity. Considered in 
thought, and in being, the supreme principle is inferior to itself; 
only in the pure simplicity of its indefinable essence is it the last 
object of science, and the last term of perfection. 

In order to enter into communication with such a God, the 
ordinary faculties are not sufficient, and the theodicea of the 
school of Alexandria imposes upon it a quite peculiar psychology. 

In the truth of things, reason conceives absolute unity as an 
attribute of absolute being, but not as something in itself, or, if it 
considers it apart, it knows that it considers only an abstraction. 
Does one wish to make absolute unity something else than an 
attribute of an absolute being, or an abstraction, a conception of 
human intelligence % Reason could accept nothing more on any 
condition. Will this barren unity be the object of love ? But 
love, much more than reason, aspires after a real object. One 
does not love substance in general, but a substance that possesses 
such or such a character. In human friendships, suppress all the 
qualities of a person, or modify them, and you modify or sup- 
press the love. This does not prove that you do not love this 
person ; it only proves that the person is not for you without his 
qualities. 

So neither reason nor love can attain the absolute unity of 
mysticism, In order to correspond to such an object, there must 
be in us something analogous to it, there must be a mode of 
knowing that implies the abolition of consciousness. In fact, 



ON MYSTICISM. 117 

consciousness is the sign of the me, that is to say, of that which 
is most determinate : the being who says, me, distinguishes him- 
self essentially from every other ; that is for us the type itself of 
individuality. Consciousness should degrade the ideal of dialectic 
knowledge, or every division, every determination must be want- 
ing, in order to respond to the absolute unity of its object. This 
mode of pure and direct communication with God, which is not 
reason, which is not love, which excludes consciousness, is ecstasy 
{sxradig). This word, which Plotinus first applied to this singu- 
lar state of the soul, expresses this separation from ourselves 
which mysticism exacts, and of which it believes man capable. 
Man, in order to communicate with absolute being, must go out 
of himself. It is necessary that thought should reject all deter- 
minate thought, and, in falling back within its own depths, should 
arrive at such an oblivion of itself, that consciousness should van- 
ish or seem to vanish. But that is only an image of ecstasy ; 
what it is in itself, no one knows ; as it escapes all consciousness, 
it escapes memory, escapes reflection, and consequently all ex- 
pression, all human speech. 

This philosophical mysticism rests upon a radically false notion 
of absolute being. By dint of wishing to free God from all the 
conditions of finite existence, one comes to deprive him of all the 
conditions of existence itself; one has such a fear that the infi- 
nite may have something in common with the finite, that he does 
not dare to recognize that being is common to both, save differ- 
ence of degree, as if all that is not were not nothingness itself! 
Absolute being possesses absolute unity without any doubt, as it 
possesses absolute intelligence ; but, once more, absolute unity 
without a real subject of inherence is destitute of all reality. 
Real and determinate are synonyms. What constitutes a being- 
is its special nature, its essence. A being is itself only on the 
condition of not being another ; it cannot but have characteristic 
traits. All that is, is such or such. Difference is an element as 
essential to being as unity itself. If, then, reality is in determi- 
nation, it follows that God is the most determinate of beings. 



118 LECTURE FIFTH. 

Aristotle is much more Platonic than Plotinus, when he says 
that God is the thought of thought, 1 that he is not a simple 
power, but a power effectively acting, meaning thereby that God, 
to be perfect, ought to have nothing in himself that is not com- 
pleted. To finite nature it belongs to be, in a certain sense, in- 
determinate, since being finite, it has always in itself powers that 
are not realized ; this indetermination diminishes as these powers 
are realized. So true divine unity is not abstract unity, it is the 
precise unity of perfect being in which every thing is accom- 
plished. At the summit of existence, still more than at its low 
degree, every thing is determinate, every thing is developed, 
every thing is distinct, every thing is one. The richness of deter- 
minations is a certain sign of the plenitude of being. Reflection 
distinguishes these determinations from each other, but it is not 
necessary that it should in these distinctions see the limits. In 
us, for example, does the diversity of our faculties and their 
richest development divide the me and alter the identity and the 
unity of the person ? Does each one of us believe himself less 
than himself, because he possesses sensibility, reason, and will ? 
No, surely. It is the same with God. Not having employed a 
sufficient psychology, Alexandrian mysticism imagined that di- 
versity of attributes is incompatible with simplicity of essence, 
and through fear of corrupting simple and pure essence, it made 
of it an abstraction. By a senseless scruple, it feared that God 
would not be sufficiently perfect, if it left him all his perfections ; 
it regards them as imperfections, being as a degradation, creation 
as a fall ; and, in order to explain man and the universe, it is 
forced to put in God what it calls failings, not having seen that 
these pretended failings are the very signs of his infinite perfec- 
tion. 

The theory of ecstasy is at once the necessary condition and 
the condemnation of the theory of absolute unity. Without ab- 



1 Book xii. of the Metaphysics. De la Metaphysique d" 1 Aristotle, 2d edition, 
p. 200, etc. 



ON MYSTICISM. 119 

solute unity as the direct object of knowledge, of what use is 
ecstasy in the subject of knowledge? Ecstasy, far from elevating 
man to God, abases him below man ; for it effaces in him thought, 
by taking away its condition, which is consciousness. To suppress 
consciousness, is to render all knowledge impossible ; it is not to 
comprehend the perfection of this mode of knowing, wherein the 
limitation of subject and object gives at once the simplest, most 
immediate, and most determinate knowledge. 1 

The Alexandrian mysticism is the most learned and the pro- 
foundest of all known mysticisms. In the heights of abstraction 
where it loses itself, it seems very far from popular superstitions ; 
and yet the school of Alexandria unites ecstatic contemplation 
and theurgy. These are two things, in appearance, incompatible, 
but they pertain to the same principle, to the pretension of di- 
rectly perceiving what inevitably escapes all our efforts. On the 
one hand, a refined mysticism aspires to God by ecstasy; on the 
other, a gross mysticism thinks to seize him by the senses. The 
processes, the faculties employed, differ, but the foundation is the 
same, and from this common foundation necessarily spring the 
most opposite extravagances. Apollonius of Tyanus is a popu- 
lar Alexandrianist, and Jamblicus is Plotinus become a priest, 
mystagogue, and hierophant. A new worship shone forth by 
miracles ; the ancient worship would have its own miracles, and 
i 

1 On this fundamental point, see lecture 3, in this vol. — 2d Series, vol. i., 
lecture 5, p. 97. " The peculiarity of intelligence is not the power of know- 
ing, but knowing in fact. On what condition is there intelligence for us ? 
It is not enough that there should be in us a principle of intelligence ; this 
principle must be developed and exercised, and take itself as the object of 
its intelligence. The necessary condition of intelligence is consciousness — 
that is to say, difference. There can be consciousness only where there are 
several terms, one of which perceives the other, and at the same time per- 
ceives itself. That is knowing, and knowing self; that is intelligence. In- 
telligence without consciousness is the abstract possibility of intelligence, it 
is not real intelligence. Transfer this from human intelligence to divine in- 
telligence, that is to say, refer ideas, I mean ideas in the sense of Plato, of St. 
Augustine, of Bossuet, of Leibnitz, to the only intelligence to which they 
can belong, and you will have, if I may thus express myself, the life of the 
divine intelligence .... etc." 



120 LECTURE FIFTH. 

philosophers boasted that they could make the divinity appear 
before other men. They had demons for themselves, and, in 
some sort, for their own orders ; the gods were not only invoked, 
but evoked. Ecstasy for the initiates, theurgy for the crowd. 

At all times and in all places, these two mysticisms have given 
each other the hand. In India and in China, the schools where 
the most subtile idealism is taught, are not far from pagodas of 
the most abject idolatry. One day the Bhagavad-Gita or Lao- 
tseu 1 is read, an indefinable God is taught, without essential and 
determinate attributes ; the next day there is shown to the people 
such or such a form, such or such a manifestation of this God, 
who, not having a form that belongs to him, can receive all forms, 
and being only substance in itself, is necessarily the substance of 
every thing, of a stone and a drop of water, of a dog, a hero, and 
a sage. So, in the ancient world under Julien, for example, the 
same man was at once professor in the school of Athens and 
guardian of the temple of Minerva or Cybele, by turns obscuring 
the Timceus and the Republic by subtile commentaries, and ex- 
hibiting to the eyes of the multitude sometimes the sacred vale, 2 
sometimes the shrine of the good goddess, 3 and in either function, 
as priest or philosopher, imposing on others and himself, under- 
taking to ascend above the human mind and falling miserably 
below it, paying in some sort the penalty of an unintelligible 
metaphysics in lending himself to the most shameless super- 
stitions. 

When the Christian religion triumphed, it brought humanity 
under a discipline that puts a rein upon this deplorable mysticism. 
But how many times has it brought back, under the reign of 
spiritual religion, all the extravagances of the religions of nature ! 
It was to appear especially at the renaissance of the schools and 
of the genius of Paganism in the sixteenth century, when the 

1 Vol. ii. of the 2d Series, Sketch of a General History of Philosophy, lec- 
tures 5 and 6, On the Indian Philosophy. 

2 See the Mithyphron, vol. i. of our translation. 
s Lucien, Apulcius, Lucius ofPatras. 



ON MYSTICISM. 121 

human mind had broken with the philosophy of the Middle Age, 
without yet having arrived at modern philosophy. 1 The Paracel- 
suses and the Von Helmonts renewed the Apolloniuses and the 
Jamblicuses, abusing some chemical and medical knowledge, as 
the former had abused the Socratic and Platonic method, altered 
in its character, and turned from its true object. And so, in the 
midst of the eighteenth century, has not Swedenborg united in 
his own person an exalted mysticism and a sort of magic, opening 
thus the way to those senseless 2 persons who contest with me in 
the morning the solidest and best-established proofs of the exist- 
ence of the soul and God, and propose to me in the evening to 
make me see otherwise than with my eyes, and to make me hear 
otherwise than with my ears, to make me use all my faculties 
otherwise than by their natural organs, promising me a superhu- 
man science, on the condition of first losing consciousness, -thought, 
liberty, memory, all that constitutes me an intelligent and moral 
being. I should know all, then, but at the cost of knowing- 
nothing that I should know. I should elevate myself to a mar- 
vellous world, which, awakened and in a natural state, I am not 
even able to suspect, of which no remembrance will remain to me : 
— a mysticism at once gross and chimerical, which perverts both 
psychology and physiology ; an imbecile ecstasy, renewed without 
genius from the Alexandrine ecstasy ; an extravagance which has 
not even the merit of a little novelty, and which history has seen 
reappearing at all epochs of ambition and impotence. 

This is what we come to when we wish to go beyond the con- 
ditions imposed upon human nature. Charron first said, and 



1 2d Series, vol. ii., Sketch of a General History of Philosophy ; lecture 10, 
On tlie Philosophy of the Renaissance. 

2 One was then ardently occupied with magnetism, and more than a mag- 
netizer, half a materialist, half a visionary, pretended to convert us to a sys- 
tem of perfect clairvoyance of soul, obtained by means of artificial sleep. 
Alas ! the same follies are now renewed. Conjunctions arc the fashion. 
Spirits are interrogated, and they respond ! Only let there be conscious- 
ness that one does not interrogate, and superstition alone counterpoises 

ticism. 

6 



122 LECTURE FIFTH. 

after him Pascal repeated it, that whoever would become an angel 
becomes a beast. The remedy for all these follies is a severe 
theory of reason, of what it can and what it cannot do ; of 
reason enveloped first in the exercise of the senses, than elevating 
itself to universal and necessary ideas, referring them to their 
principle, to a being infinite and at the same time real and sub- 
stantial, whose existence it conceives, but whose nature it is 
always interdicted to penetrate and comprehend. Sentiment ac- 
companies and vivifies the sublime intuitions of reason, but we 
must not confound these two orders of facts, much less smother 
reason in sentiment. Between a finite being like man and God, 
absolute and infinite substance, there is the double intermediary 
of that magnificent universe open to our gaze, and of those mar- 
vellous truths which reason conceives, but has not made more 
than the eye makes the beauties it perceives. The only means 
that is given us of elevating ourselves to the Being of beings, 
without being dazzled and bewildered, is to approach him by the 
aid of a divine intermediary ; that is to say, to consecrate our- 
selves to the study and the love of truth, and, as we shall soon 
see, to the contemplation and reproduction of the beautiful, espe- 
cially to the practice of the good. 



PAKT SECOND 



THE BEAUTIFUL. 



LECTUEE VI. 

THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 

The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art is, as in 
the investigation of the true, to commence by psychology. — Faculties of 
the soul that unite in the perception of the beautiful. — The senses give 
only the agreeable ; reason alone gives the idea of the beautiful. — Kefuta- 
tion of empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the beautiful. — Pre- 
eminence of reason. — Sentiment of the beautiful; different from sensation 
and desire. — Distinction between the sentiment of the beautiful and that 
of the sublime. — Imagination. — Influence of sentiment on imagination. — 
Influence of imagination on sentiment. — Theory of taste. 

Let us recall in a few words the results at which we have 
arrived. 

Two exclusive schools are opposed to each other in the eigh- 
teenth century" ; we have combated both, and each by the other. 
To empiricism we have opposed the insufficiency of sensation, 
and its own inevitable necessity to idealism. We have admitted, 
with Locke and Condillac, in regard to the origin of knowledge, 
particular and contingent ideas, which we owe to the senses and 
consciousness ; and above the senses and consciousness, the direct 
sources of all particular ideas, we have recognized, with Reid 
and Kant, a special faculty, different from sensation and conscious- 
ness, but developed with them, — reason, the lofty source of uni- 
versal and necessary truths. We have established, against Kant, 



124 LECTUKE SIXTH. 

the absolute authority of reason, and the truths which it discovers. 
Then, the truths that reason revealed to us have themselves re- 
vealed to us their eternal principle, — God. Finally, this rational 
spiritualism, which is both the faith of the human race and the 
doctrine of the greatest minds of antiquity and modern times, we 
have carefully distinguished from a chimerical and dangerous 
mysticism. Thus the necessity of experience and the necessity of 
reason, the necessity of a real and infinite being which is the first 
and last foundation of truth, a severe distinction between spirit- 
ualism and mysticism, are the great principles which we have 
been able to gather from the first part of this course. 

The second part, the study of the beautiful, will give us the 
same results elucidated and aggrandized by a new application. 

It was the eighteenth century that introduced, or rather brought 
back into philosophy, investigations on the beautiful and art, so 
familiar to Plato and Aristotle, but which scholasticism had not 
entertained, to which our great philosophy of the seventeenth 
century had remained almost a stranger. 1 One comprehends that 
it did not belong to the empirical school to revive this noble part 
of philosophic science. Locke and Condillac did not leave a 
chapter, not even a single page, on the beautiful. Their follow- 
ers treated beauty with the same disdain; not knowing very well 
how to explain it in their system, they found it more convenient 
not to perceive it at all. Diderot, it is true, had an enthusiasm 
for beauty and art, but enthusiasm was never so ill placed. Di- 
derot had genius ; but, as Voltaire said of him, his was a head 
in which every thing fermented without coming to maturity. He 
scattered here and there a mass of ingenious and often contradic- 
tory perceptions ; he has no principles ; he abandons himself to 
the impression of the moment ; he knows not what the ideal is ; 
he delights in a kind of nature, at once common and mannered, 



1 Except the estimable .Essay on the Beautiful, by P. Andre'', a disciple of 
Malebranche, whose life was considerably prolonged into the eighteenth 
century. On P. Andre, see 3d Series, vol. hi., Modem Philosophy, p. 
207, 516. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 125 

such as one might expect from the author of the Interpretation 
de la Nature, the Pere de Famille, the Neveu de Rameau, and 
Jacques le Fataliste. Diderot is a fatalist in art as well as in 
philosophy ; he belongs to his times and his school, with a grain 
of poetry, sensibility, and imagination. 1 It was worthy of the 
Scotch 2 school and Kant 3 to give a place to the beautiful in their 
doctrine. They considered it in the soul and in nature ; but they 
did not even touch the difficult question of the reproduction of 
the beautiful by the genius of man. We will try to embrace this 
great subject in its whole extent, and we are about to offer at 
least a sketch of a regular and complete theory of beauty and art. 

Let us begin by establishing well the method that must preside 
over these investigations. 

One can study the beautiful in two ways : — either out of us, in 
itself and in the objects, whatever they may be, that bear its im- 
press ; or in the mind of man, in the faculties that attain it, in 
the ideas or sentiments that it excites in us. Now, the true 
method, which must now be familiar to you, makes setting out 
from man to arrive at things a law for us. Therefore psychologi- 
cal analysis will here again be our point of departure, and the 
study of the state of the soul in presence of the beautiful will pre- 
pare us for that of the beautiful considered in itself and its objects. 

Let us interrogate the soul in the presence of beauty. 

Is it not an incontestable fact that before certain objects, under 
very different circumstances, we pronounce the following judg- 
ment : — This object is beautiful ? This affirmation is not always 
explicit. Sometimes it manifests itself only by a cry of admira- 
tion ; sometimes it silently rises in the mind that scarcely has a 
consciousness of it. The forms of this phenomenon vary, but the 



1 See in the works of Diderot, Pensees sur la Sculpture, les Salons, etc. 

2 See 1st Series, vol. iv., explained and estimated, the theories of Hntch- 
eson and Eeid. 

2 The theory of Kant is found in the Critique of Judgment, and in the Ob- 
servations on the Sentiment of the Beautiful and the Sublime. See the excel- 
lent translation made by M. Barny, 2 vols., 1846. 



126 LECTURE SIXTH. 

phenomenon is attested by the most common and most certain 
observation, and all languages bear witness of it. 

Although sensible objects, with most men, oftenest provoke 
the judgment of the beautiful, they do not alone possess this ad- 
vantage ; the domain of beauty is more extensive than the domain 
of the physical world exposed to our view ; it has no bounds but 
those of entire nature, and of the soul and genius of man. Before 
an heroic action, by the remembrance of a great sacrifice ; even by 
the thought of the most abstract truths firmly united with each 
other in a system admirable at once for its simplicity and its pro- 
ductiveness ; finally, before objects of another order, before the 
works of art, this same phenomenon is produced in us. We 
recognize in all these objects, however different, a common quality 
in regard to which our judgment is pronounced, and this quality 
we call beauty. 

The philosophy of sensation, in faithfulness to itself, should have 
attempted to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable. 

Without doubt, beauty is almost always agreeable to the senses, 
or at least it must not wound them. Most of our ideas of the 
beautiful come to us by sight and hearing, and all the arts, with- 
out exception, are addressed to the soul through the body. An 
object which makes us suffer, were it the most beautiful in the 
world, very rarely appears to us such. Beauty has little influence 
over a soul occupied with grief. 

But if an agreeable sensation often accompanies the idea of the 
beautiful, we must not conclude that one is the other. 

Experience testifies that all agreeable things do not appear 
beautiful, and that, among agreeable things, those which are 
most so are not the most beautiful, — a sure sign that the agree- 
able is not the beautiful ; for if one is identical with the other, 
they should never be separated, but should always be commensu- 
rate with each other. 

Far from this, whilst all our senses give us agreeable sensa- 
tions, only two have the privilege of awakening in us the idea of 
beauty. Does one ever say : This is a beautiful taste, this is a 



THE BEAUTIFUL EST THE MTND OF MAN. 127 

beautiful smell ? Nevertheless, one should say it, if the beautiful 
is the agreeable. On the other hand, there are certain pleasures 
of odor and taste that move sensibility more than the greatest 
beauties of nature and art ; and even among the perceptions of 
hearing and sight, those are not always the most vivid that most 
excite in us the idea of beauty. Do not pictures, ordinary in 
coloring, often move us more deeply than many dazzling produc- 
tions, more seductive to the eye, less touching to the soul ? I 
say farther ; sensation not only does not produce the idea of the 
beautiful, but sometimes stifles it. Let an artist occupy himself 
with the reproduction of voluptuous forms ; while pleasing the 
senses, he disturbs, he repels in us the chaste and pure idea of 
beauty. The agreeable is not, then, the measure of the beautiful, 
since in certain cases it effaces it and makes us forget it ; it is not, 
then, the beautiful, since it is found, and in the highest degree, 
where the beautiful is not. 

This conducts us to the essential foundation of the distinction 
between the idea of the beautiful and the sensation of the agree- 
able, to wit, the difference already explained between sensibility 
and reason. 

When an object makes you experience an agreeable sensation, 
if one asks you why this object is agreeable to you, you can 
answer nothing, except that such is your impression ; and if one 
informs you that this same object produces upon others a differ- 
ent impression and displeases them, you are not much astonished, 
because you know that sensibility is diverse, and that sensations 
must not be disputed. Is it the same when an object is not only 
agreeable to you, but when you judge that it is beautiful ? You 
pronounce, for example, that this figure is noble and beautiful, 
that this sunrise or sunset is beautiful, that disinterestedness and 
devotion are beautiful, that virtue is beautiful ; if one contests 
with you the truth of these judgments, then you are not as ac- 
commodating as you were just now; you do not accept the 
dissent as an inevitable effect of different sensibilities, you no 
longer appeal to your sensibility which naturally terminates in 



128 LECTURE SIXTH. 

you, you appeal to an authority which is made for others as well 
as you, that of reason ; you believe that you have the right of 
accusing him with error who contradicts your judgment, for here 
your judgment rests no longer on something variable and indi- 
vidual, like an agreeable or painful sensation. The agreeable is 
confined for us within the inclosure of our own organization, 
where it changes every moment, according to the perpetual revo- 
lutions of this organization, according to health and sickness, the 
state of the atmosphere, that of our nerves, etc. But it is not so 
with beauty ; beauty, like truth, belongs to none of us ; no one 
has the right to dispose of it arbitrarily, and when we say : this 
is true, this is beautiful, it is no longer the particular and varia- 
ble impression of our sensibilitj T that we express, it is the absolute 
judgment that reason imposes on all men. 

Confound reason and sensibility, reduce the idea of the beauti- 
ful to the sensation of the agreeable, and taste no longer has a 
law. If a person says to me, in the presence of the Apollo Bel- 
vide re, that he feels nothing more agreeable than in presence of 
any other statue, that it does not please him at all, that he does 
not feel its beauty, I cannot dispute his impression ; but if this 
person thence concludes that the Apollo is not beautiful, I proudly 
contradict him, and declare that he is deceived. Good taste is 
distinguished from bad taste ; but what does this distinction sig- 
nify, if the judgment of the beautiful is resolved into a sensation? 
You say to me that I have no taste. What does that mean ? 
Have I not senses like you ? Does not the object which you 
admire act upon me as well as upon you ? Is not the impression 
which I feel as real as that which you feel ? Whence comes it, 
then, that you are right, — you who only -give expression to the 
impression which you feel, and that I am wrong, — I who do pre- 
cisely the same thing ? Is it because those who feel like you are 
more numerous than those who feel like me ? But here the 
number of voices means nothing ? The beautiful being defined 
as that which produces on the senses an agreeable impression, a 
thing that pleases a single man, though it were frightfully ugly 



THE BEAUTIFUL EST TIIE MIND OF MAN. 129 

in the eyes of all the rest of the human race, must, nevertheless, 
and very legitimately, be called beautiful by him who receives 
from it an agreeable impression, for, so far as he is concerned, it 
satisfies the definition. There is, then, no true beauty ; there are 
only relative and changing beauties, beauties of circumstance, 
custom, fashion, and all these beauties, however different, will 
have a right to the same respect, provided they meet sensibilities 
to which they are agreeable. And as there is nothing in this 
world, in the infinite diversity of our dispositions, which may not 
please some one, there will be nothing that is not beautiful ; or, 
to speak more truly, there will be nothing either beautiful or ugly, 
and the Hottentot Venus will equal the Venus de Medici. The 
absurdity of the consequences demonstrates the absurdity of the 
principle. But there is only one means of escaping these conse- 
quences, which is to repudiate the principle, and recognize the 
judgment of the beautiful as an absolute judgment, and, as such, 
entirely different from sensation. 

Finally, and this is the last rock of empiricism, is there in us 
only the idea of an imperfect and finite beauty, and while we are 
admiring the real beauties that nature furnishes, are we not ele- 
vating ourselves to the idea of a superior beauty, which Plato, 
with great excellence of expression, calls the Idea of the beauti- 
ful, which, after him, all men of delicate taste, all true artists 
call the Ideal ? If we establish degrees in the beauty of things, 
is it not because we compare them, often without noticing it, with 
this ideal, which is to us the measure and rule of all our judg- 
ments in regard to particular beauties ? How could this idea of 
absolute beauty enveloped in all our judgments on the beautiful, 
— how could this ideal beauty, which it is impossible for us not 
to conceive, be revealed to us by sensation, by a faculty variable 
and relative like the objects that it perceives ? 

The philosophy which deduces all our ideas from the senses 
falls to the ground, then, before the idea of the beautiful. It re- 
mains to see whether this idea can be better explained by moans 
of sentiment, which is different from sensation, which so nearly 

6* 



130 LECTURE SLXTH. 

resembles reason that good judges have often taken it for reason, 
and have made it the principle of the idea of the beautiful as 
well as that of the good. It is already a progress, without doubt, 
to go from sensation to sentiment, and Hutcheson and Smith 1 
are in our eyes very different philosophers from Condillac and 
Helvetius ; 2 but we believe that we have sufficiently established 8 
that, in confounding sentiment with reason, we deprive it of its 
foundation and rule, that sentiment, particular and variable in its 
nature, different to different men, and in each man continually 
changing, cannot be sufficient for itself. Nevertheless, if senti- 
ment is not a principle, it is a true and important fact, and, after 
having distinguished it well from reason, we ourselves proceed to 
elevate it far above sensation, and elucidate the important part it 
plays in the perception of beauty. 

Place yourself before an object of nature, wherein men recog- 
nize beauty, and observe what takes place within you at the sight 
of this object. Is it not certain that, at the same time that you 
judge that it is beautiful, you also feel its beauty, that is to say, 
that you experience at the sight of it a delightful emotion, and 
that you are attracted towards this object by a sentiment of sym- 
pathy and love ? In other cases you judge otherwise, and feel 
an opposite sentiment. Aversion accompanies the judgment of 
the ugly, as love accompanies the judgment of the beautiful. 
And this sentiment is awakened not only in presence of the ob- 
jects of nature : all objects, whatever they may be, that we judge 
to be ugly or beautiful, have the power to excite in us this senti- 
ment. Vary the circumstances as much as you please, place me 
before an admirable edifice or before a beautiful landscape ; repre- 
sent to my mind the great discoveries of Descartes and Newton, 



1 On Hutcheson and Smith, their merits and defects, the part of truth and 
the part of error, which their philosophy contains, see the detailed lectures 
which we have devoted to them, 1st Series, vol. iv. 

3 See the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Condillac and Hel- 
vetius, Ibid,, vol. iii. 

3 See lecture 5, in this vol. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 131 

the exploits of the great Conde, the virtue of St. Vincent de 
Paul ; elevate me still higher ; awaken in me the obscure and too 
much forgotten idea of the infinite being ; whatever you do, as 
often as you give birth within me to the idea of the beautiful, 
you give me an internal and exquisite joy, always followed by a 
sentiment of love for the object that caused it. 

The more beautiful the object is, the more lively is the joy 
which it gives the soul, and the more profound is the love with- 
out being passionate. In admiration judgment rules, but ani- 
mated by sentiment. Is admiration increased to the degree of 
impressing upon the soul an emotion, an ardor that seems to ex- 
ceed the limits of human nature % this state of the soul is called 
enthusiasm : 

" Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo." 

The philosophy of sensation explains sentiment, as well as the 
idea of the beautiful, only by changing its nature. It confounds 
it with agreeable sensation, and, consequently, for it the love of 
beauty can be nothing but desire. There is no theory more con- 
tradicted by facts. 

What is desire ? It is an emotion of the soul which has, for 
its avowed or secret end, possession. Admiration is in its nature 
respectful, whilst desire tends to profane its object. 

Desire is the offspring of need. It supposes, then, in him who 
experiences it, a want, a defect, and, to a certain point, suffering. 
The sentiment of the beautiful is to itself its own satisfaction. 

Desire is burning, impetuous, sad. The sentiment of the beau- 
tiful, free from all desire, and always without fear, elevates and 
warms the soul, and may transport it even to enthusiasm, with- 
out making it know the troubles of passion. The artist sees only 
the beautiful where the sensual man sees only the alluring and 
the frightful. On a vessel tossed by a tempest, while the passen- 
gers tremble at the sight of the threatening waves, and at the 
sound of the thunder that breaks over their heads, the artist re- 
mains absorbed in the contemplation of the sublime spectacle. 



132 LECTUEE SIXTH. 

Vernet has himself lashod to the mast in order to contemplate 
for a longer time the storm in its majestic and terrible beauty. 
When he knows fear, when he participates in the common feel- 
ing, the artist vanishes, there no more remains any thing but the 
man. 

The sentiment of the beautiful is so far from being desire, that 
each excludes the other. Let me take a common example. Be- 
fore a table loaded with meats and delicious wines, the desire of 
enjoyment is awakened, but not the sentiment of the beautiful. 
Suppose that if, instead of thinking of the pleasures which all 
these things spread before my eyes promise me, I only take no- 
tice of the manner in which they are arranged and set upon the 
table, and the order of the feast, the sentiment of the beautiful 
might in some degree be produced ; but surely this will be 
neither the need nor the desire of appropriating this symmetry, 
this order. 

It is the property of beauty not to irritate and inflame desire, 
but to purify and ennoble it. The more beautiful a woman is, — 
I do not mean that common and gross beauty which Reubens in 
vain animates with his brilliant coloring, but that ideal beauty 
which antiquity and Raphael understood so well, — the more, at 
the sight of this noble creature is desire tempered by an exquisite 
and delicate sentiment, and is sometimes even replaced by a dis- 
interested worship. If the Venus of the Capitol, or the Saint 
Cecilia, excites in you sensual desires, you are not made to feel 
the beautiful. So the true artist addresses himself less to the 
senses than to the soul ; in painting beauty he only seeks to 
awaken in us sentiment ; and when he has carried this sentiment 
as far as enthusiasm, he has obtained the last triumph of art. 

The sentiment of the beautiful is, therefore, a special sentiment, 
as the idea of the beautiful is a simple idea. But is this senti- 
ment, one in itself, manifested only in a single way, and applied 
only to a single kind of beauty ? Here again — here, as always 
— let us interrogate experience. 

When we have before our eyes an object whose forms are per- 



THE BEAUTIFUL EST THE MESD OF MAN. 133 

fectly determined, and the whole easy to embrace, — a beautiful 
flower, a beautiful statue, an antique temple of moderate size, — 
each of our faculties attaches itself to this object, and rests upon 
it with an unalloyed satisfaction. Our senses easily perceive its 
details ; our reason seizes the happy harmony of all its parts. 
Should this object disappear, we can distinctly represent it to 
ourselves, so precise and fixed are its forms. The soul in this 
contemplation feels again a sweet and tranquil joy, a sort of ef- 
florescence. 

Let us consider, on the other hand, an object with vague and 
indefinite forms, which may nevertheless be very beautiful : the 
impression which we experience is without doubt a pleasure still, 
but it is a pleasure of a different order. This object does not call 
forth all our powers like the first. Eeason conceives it, but the 
senses do not perceive the whole of it, and imagination does not 
distinctly represent it to itself. The senses and the imagination 
try in vain to attain its last limits ; our faculties are enlarged, are 
inflated, thus to speak, in order to embrace it, but it escapes and 
surpasses them. The pleasure that we feel comes from the very 
magnitude of the object ; but, at the same time, this magnitude 
produces in us I know not what melancholy sentiment, because 
it is disproportionate to us. At the sight of the starry heavens, 
of the vast sea, of o-io-antic mountains, admiration is mino-led 
with sadness. These objects, in reality finite, like the world it- 
self, seem to us infinite, in our want of power to comprehend 
their immensity, and, resembling what is truly without bounds, 
they awaken in us the idea of the infinite, that idea which 
at once elevates and confounds our intelligence. The corre- 
sponding sentiment which the soul experiences is an austere 
pleasure. 

In order to render the difference which we wish to mark more 
perceptible, examples may be multiplied. Are you affected in 
the same wav at the sio-ht of a meadow, varieo-ated in its rather 
limited dimensions, whose extent the eye can easily take in, and 
at the aspect of an inaccessible mountain, at the foot of which 



134: LECTURE SIXTH. 

the ocean breaks ? Do the sweet light of day and a melodious 
voice produce upon you the same effect as darkness and silence ? 
In the intellectual and moral order, are you moved in the same 
way when a rich and good man opens his purse to the indigent, 
and when a magnanimous man gives hospitality to his enemy, 
and saves him at the peril of his own life ? Take some light 
poetry in which measure, spirit, and grace, everywhere predomi- 
nate ; take an ode, and especially an epistle of Horace, or some 
small verses of Voltaire, and compare them with the Iliad, or 
those immense Indian poems that are filled with marvellous 
events, wherein the highest metaphysics are united to recitals by 
turns graceful or pathetic, those poems that have more than two 
hundred thousand verses, whose personages are gods or symbolic 
beings ; and see whether the impressions that you experience 
will be the same. As a last example, suppose, on the one hand, 
a writer who, with two or three strokes of the pen, sketches an 
analysis of intelligence, agreeable and simple, but without depth, 
and, on the other, a philosopher who engages in a long labor in 
order to arrive at the most rigorous decomposition of the faculty 
of knowing, and unfolds to you a long chain of principles and 
consequences, — read the Traits des Sensations and the Critique 
of Pure Reason, and, even leaving out of the account the truth 
and the falsehood they may contain, with reference solely to the 
beautiful, compare your impressions. 

These are, then, two very different sentiments ; different names 
have also been given them : one has been more particularly 
called the sentiment of the beautiful, the other that of the sub- 
lime. 

In order to complete the study of the different faculties that 
enter into the perception of beauty, after reason and sentiment, 
it remains to us to speak of a faculty not less necessary, ^vhich 
animates them and vivifies them, — imagination. 

When sensation, judgment, and sentiment have been produced 
by the occasion of an external object, they are reproduced even 
in the absence of this object ; this is memory. i 



THE BEAUTIFUL LN THE MIND OF MAN". 135 

Memory is double : — not only do I remember that I have been 
in the presence of a certain object, but I represent to myself this 
absent object as it was, as I have seen, felt, and judged it : — the 
remembrance is then an image. In this last case, memory has 
been called by some philosophers imaginative memory. Such is 
the foundation of imagination ; but imagination is something 
more still. 

The mind, applying itself to the images furnished by memory, 
decomposes them, chooses between their different traits, and 
forms of them new images. Without this new power, imagina- 
tion would be captive in the circle of memory. 

The "gift of being strongly affected by objects and reproducing 
their absent or vanished images, and the power of modifying 
these images so as to compose of them new ones, — do they fully 
constitute what men call imagination ? No, or at least, if these 
are indeed the proper elements of imagination, there must be 
something else added, to wit, the sentiment of the beautiful in 
all its degrees. By this means is a great imagination preserved 
and kindled. Did the careful reading of Titus Livius enable the 
author of the Horaces to vividly represent to himself some of the 
scenes described, to seize their principal traits and combine them 
happily ? From the outset, sentiment, love of the beautiful, 
especially of the morally beautiful, w T ere requisite ; there was 
required that great heart whence sprang the word of the ancient 
Horace. 

Let us be well understood. We do not say that sentiment is 
imagination, we say that it is the source whence imagination 
derives its inspirations and becomes productive. If men are so 
different in regard to imagination, it is because some are cold in 
presence of objects, cold in the representations which they preserve 
of them, cold also in the combinations which they form of them, 
whilst others, endowed with a particular sensibility, are vividly 
moved by the first impressions of objects, preserve strong recollec- 
tions of them, aud carry into the exercise of all their faculties this 
same force of emotion. Take away sentiment and all else is man- 



136 LECTURE SIXTH. 

imate; let it manifest itself, and every thing receives warmth, 
color, and life. 

It is then impossible to limit imagination, as the word seems 
to demand, to images properly so called, and to ideas that are 
related to physical objects. To remember sounds, to choose 
between them, to combine them in order to draw from them new 
effects, — does not this belong to imagination, although sound is 
not an image ? The true musician does not possess less imagina- 
tion than the painter. Imagination is conceded to the poet when 
he retraces the images of nature ; will this same faculty be refused 
him when he retraces sentiments ? But, besides images and sen- 
timents, does not the poet employ the high thoughts of justice, 
liberty, virtue, in a word, moral ideas? Will it be said that in 
moral paintings, in pictures of the intimate life of the soul, either 
graceful or energetic, there is no imagination ? 

You see what is the extent of imagination : it has no limits, it 
is applied to all things. Its distinctive character is that of deeply 
moving the soul in the presence of a beautiful object, or by its 
remembrance alone, or even by the idea alone of an imaginary 
object. It is recognized by the sign that it produces, by the aid 
of its representations, the same impression as, and even an im- 
pression more vivid than, nature by the aid of real objects. If 
beauty, absent and dreamed of, does not affect you as much as, 
and more than, present beauty, you may have a thousand other 
gifts, — that of imagination has been refused you. 

In the eyes of imagination, the real world languishes in com- 
parison with its own fictions. One may feel that imagination is 
his master by the ennui that real and present things give him. 
The phantoms of imagination have a vagueness, an indefiniteness 
of form, which moves a thousand times more than the clearness 
and distinctness of actual perceptions. And then, unless we are 
wholly mad, — and passion does not always render this service, — 
it is very difficult to see reality otherwise than as it is not, that is 
to say, very imperfectly. On the other hand, one makes of an 
image what he wishes, unconsciously metamorphoses it, embel- 



THE BEAUTIFUL HST THE MIND OF MAN. 137 

lishes it to his own liking. There is at the bottom of the human 
soul an infinite power of feeling and loving to which the entire 
world does not answer, still less a single one of its creatures, how- 
ever charming. All mortal beauty, viewed near by, does not 
suffice for this insatiable power which it excites and cannot satisfy. 
But from afar, its effects disappear or are diminished, shades are 
mingled and confounded in the clear-obscure of memory and 
dream, and the objects please more because they are less deter- 
minate. The peculiarity of men of imagination is, that they repre- 
sent men and things otherwise than as they are, and that they 
have a passion for such fantastic images. Those that are called 
positive men, are men without imagination, who perceive only 
what they see, and deal with reality as it is instead of transform- 
ing it. They have, in general, more reason than sentiment ; they 
may be seriously, profoundly honest ; they will never be either 
poets or artists. What makes the poet or artist is, with a founda- 
tion of good sense and reason — without which all the rest is 
useless — a sensitive, even a passionate heart ; above all, a vivid, 
a powerful imagination. 

If sentiment acts upon imagination, we see that imagination 
returns with usury to sentiment what it gives. 

This pure and ardent passion, this worship of beauty that 
makes the great artist, can be found only in a man of imagina- 
tion. In fact, the sentiment of the beautiful may be awakened 
in each one of us before any beautiful object ; but, when this 
object has disappeared, if its image does not subsist vivaciously 
retraced, the sentiment which it for a moment excited is little by 
little effaced ; it may be revived at the sight of another object, 
but only to be extinguished again, — always dying to be born 
again at hazard ; not being nourished, increased, exalted by the 
vivacious and continuous reproduction of its object in the imagi- 
nation, it wants that inspiring power, without which there is no 
artist, no poet. 

A word more on another faculty, which is not a simple fac- 
ulty, but a happy combination of those which have just been 



138 LECTUEE SIXTH. 

mentioned, — taste, so ill treated, so arbitrarily limited in all 
theories. 

If, after having heard a beautiful poetical or musical work, 
admired a statue or a picture, you are able to recall what your 
senses have perceived, to see again the absent picture, to hear 
again the sounds that no longer exist ; in a word, if you have 
imagination, you possess one of the conditions without which 
there is no true taste. In fact, in order to relish the works of 
imagination, is it not necessary to have taste ? Do we not need, 
in order to feel an author, not to equal him, without doubt, but 
to resemble him in some degree ? Will not a man of sensible, 
but dry and austere mind, like Le Batteux or Condillac, be in- 
sensible to the happy darings of genius, and will he not carry 
into criticism a narrow severity, a reason very little reasonable — 
since he does not comprehend all the parts of human nature, — 
an intolerance that mutilates and blemishes art while thinking to 
purify it ? 

On the other hand, imagination does not suffice for the appre- 
ciation of beauty. Moreover, that vivacity of imagination so 
precious to taste, when it is somewhat restrained, produces, when 
it rules, only a very imperfect taste, which, not having reason for 
a basis, carelessly judges, runs the risk of misunderstanding the 
greatest beauty, — beauty that is regulated. Unity in composi- 
tion, harmony of all the parts, just proportion of details, skilful 
combination of effects, discrimination, sobriety, measure, are so 
many merits it will little feel, and will not put in their place. 
Imagination has doubtless much to do with works of art ; but, in 
fine, it is not every thing. Is it only imagination that makes the 
Polyeucte and the Misanthrope, two incomparable marvels ? Is 
there not, also, in the profound simplicity of plan, in the measured 
development of action, in the sustained truth of characters, a su- 
perior reason, different from imagination which furnishes the 
superior colors, and from sensibility that gives the passion ? 

Besides imagination and reason, the man of taste ought to 
possess an enlightened but ardent love of beauty ; he must take 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN THE MIND OF MAN. 139 

delight in meeting it, must search for it, must summon it. To 
comprehend and demonstrate that a thing is not beautiful, is an 
ordinary pleasure, an ungrateful task ; but to discern a beautiful 
thing, to be penetrated with its beauty, to make it evident, and 
make others participate in our sentiment, is an exquisite joy, a 
generous task. Admiration is, for him who feels it, at once a 
happiness and an honor. It is a happiness to feel deeply what 
is beautiful ; it is an honor to know how to recognize it. Admi- 
ration is the sign of an elevated reason served by a noble heart. 
It is above a small criticism, that is skeptical and powerless ; but 
it is the soul of a large criticism, a criticism that is productive : 
it is, thus to speak, the divine part of taste. 

After having spoken of taste which appreciates beauty, shall 
we say nothing of genius which makes it live again ? Genius is 
nothing else than taste in action, that is to say, the three powers 
of taste carried to their culmination, and armed with a new and 
mysterious power, the power of execution. But we are already 
entering upon the domain of art. Let us wait, we shall soon 
find art again and the genius that accompanies it. 



LECTUEE VII. 

THE BEAUTIFUL EST OBJECTS. 

Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful : the beautiful 
cannot be reduced to what is useful. — Nor to convenience. — Nor to pro- 
portion.— Essential characters of the beautiful. — Different kinds of beau- 
ties. The beautiful and the sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual 
beauty. Moral beauty. — Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty. — 
God, the first principle of the beautiful. — Theory of Plato. 

We have made known the beautiful in ourselves, in the facul- 
ties that perceive it and appreciate it, in reason, sentiment, 
imagination, taste ; we come, according to the order determined 
by the method, to other questions : What is the beautiful in ob- 
jects ? What is the beautiful taken in itself? What are its 
characters and different species ? What, in fine, is its first and 
last principle ? All these questions must be treated, and, if pos- 
sible, solved. Philosophy has its point of departure in psychol- 
ogy ; but, in order to attain also its legitimate termination, it 
must set out from man, and reach things themselves. 

The history of philosophy offers many theories on the nature 
of the beautiful : we do not wish to enumerate nor discuss them 
all ; we will designate the most important. 1 

There is one very gross, which defines the beautiful as that 



1 If one would make himself acquainted with a simple and piquant refuta- 
tion, written two thousand years ago, of false theories of beauty, he may 
read the Hijtpias ofPlato, vol. iv. of our translation. The Phcedrus, vol. vi., 
contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own theory ; but it is in the Banquet 
(Ibid.), and particularly in the discourse of Diotimus, that we must look for 
the thought of Plato carried to its highest degree of development, and clothed 
with all the beauty of human language. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 141 

which pleases the senses, that which procures an agreeable im- 
pression. We will not stop at this opinion. We have sufficiently 
refuted it in showing that it is impossible to reduce the beautiful 
to the agreeable. 

A sensualism a little more wise puts the useful in the place of 
the agreeable, that is to say, changes the form of the same prin- 
ciple. Neither is the beautiful the object which procures for us 
in the present moment an agreeable but fugitive sensation, it is 
the object which can often procure for us this same sensation or 
others similar. No great effort of observation or reasoning is 
necessary to convince us that utility has nothing to do with 
beauty. What is useful is not always beautiful. What is 
beautiful is not always useful, and what is at once useful and 
beautiful is beautiful for some other reason than its utility. Ob- 
serve a lever or a pulley : surely nothing is more useful. Never- 
theless, you are not tempted to say that this is beautiful. Have 
you discovered an antique vase admirably worked ? You exclaim 
that this vase is beautiful, without thinking to seek of what use 
it may be to you. Finally, symmetry and order are beautiful 
things, and at the same time, are useful things, because they 
economize space, because objects symmetrically disposed are easier 
to find when one wants them ; but that is not what makes for us 
the beauty of symmetry, for we immediately seize this kind of 
beauty, and it is often late enough before we recognize the utility 
that is found in it. It even sometimes happens, that after having 
admired the beauty of an object, we are not able to divine its 
use, although it may have one. The useful is, then, entirely 
different from the beautiful, far from being its foundation. 

A celebrated and very ancient 1 theory makes the beautiful 
consist in the perfect suitableness of means to their end. Here 
the beautiful is no longer the useful, it is the suitable ; these two 
ideas must be distinguished. A machine produces excellent 
effects, economy of time, work, etc. ; it is therefore useful. If, 

1 See the Ilippias. 



142 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

moreover, examining its construction, I find that each piece is in 
its place, and that all are skilfully disposed for the result which 
they should produce ; even without regarding the utility of this 
result, as the means are well adapted to their end, I judge that 
there is suitableness in it. We are already approaching the idea 
of the beautiful ; for we are no longer considering what is useful, 
but what is proper. Now, we have not yet attained the true 
character of beauty ; there are, in fact, objects very well adapted 
to their end, which we do not call beautiful. A bench without 
ornament and without elegance, provided it be solid, provided all 
the parts are firmly connected, provided one may sit down on it 
with safety, provided it may be for this purpose suitable, agree- 
able even, may give an example of the most perfect adaptation 
of means to an end ; it will not, therefore, be said that this bench 
is beautiful. There is here always this difference between suita- 
bleness and utility, that an object to be beautiful has no need of 
being useful, but that it is not beautiful if it does not possess 
suitableness, if there is in it a disagreement between the end and 
the means. 

Some have thought to find the beautiful in proportion, and 
this is, in fact, one of the conditions of beauty, but it is not the 
only one. It is very certain, that an object ill-proportioned can- 
not be beautiful. There is in all beautiful objects, however far 
they may be from geometric form, a sort of living geometry. 
But, I ask, is it proportion that is dominant in this slender tree, 
with flexible and graceful branches, with rich and shady foliage ? 
What makes the terrible beauty of a storm, what makes that of 
a great picture, of an isolated verse, or a sublime ode ? It is not, 
I know, wanting in law and rule, neither is it law and rule ; 
often, even what at first strikes us is an apparent irregularity. It 
is absurd to pretend that what makes us admire all these things 
and many more, is the same quality that makes us admire a 
geometric figure, that is to say, the exact correspondence of parts. 

What we say of proportion may be said of order, which is 
something less mathematical than proportion, but scarcely 






THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 143 

explains better what is free, varied, and negligent in certain 
beauties. 

All these theories which refer beauty to order, harmony, and 
proportion, are at foundation only one and the same theory which 
in the beautiful sees unity before all. And surely unity is beau- 
tiful ; it is an important part of beauty, but it is not the whole 
of beauty. 

The most probable theory of the beautiful is that which com- 
poses it of two contrary and equally necessary elements, unity 
and variety. Behold a beautiful flower. Without doubt, unity, 
order, proportion, symmetry even, are in it ; for, without these 
qualities, reason would be absent from it, and all things are 
made with a marvellous reason. But, at the same time, what a 
diversity ! How many shades in the color, what richness in the 
least details ! Even in mathematics, what is beautiful is not an 
abstract principle, it is a principle carrying with itself a long chain 
of consequences. There is no beauty without life, and life is 
movement, is diversity. 

Unity and variety are applied to all orders of beauty. Let us 
rapidly run over these different orders. 

In the first place, there are beautiful objects, to speak properly, 
and sublime objects. A beautiful object, we have seen, is some- 
thing completed, circumscribed, limited, which all our faculties 
easily embrace, because the different parts are on a somewhat 
narrow scale. A sublime object is that which, by forms not in 
themselves disproportionate, but less definite and more difficult 
to seize, awakens in us the sentiment of the infinite. 

There are two very distinct species of beauty. But reality is 
inexhaustible, and in all the degrees of reality there is beautv. 

Among sensible objects, colors, sounds, figures, movements, are 
capable of producing the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful. 
All these beauties are arranged under that species of beauty 
which, right or wrong, is called physical beauty. 

If from the world of sense we elevate ourselves to that of mind, 
truth, and science, we shall find there beauties more severe, but 



144: LECTURE SEVENTH. 

not less real. The universal laws that govern bodies, those that 
govern intelligences, the great principles that contain and produce 
long deductions, the genius that creates, in the artist, poet, or 
philosopher, — all these are beautiful, as well as nature herself: 
this is what is called intellectual beauty. 

Finally, if we consider the moral world and its laws, the idea 
of liberty, virtue, and devotedness, here the austere justice of an 
Aristides, there the heroism of a Leonidas, the prodigies of charity 
or patriotism, we shall certainly find a third order of beauty that 
still surpasses the other two, to wit, moral beauty. 

Neither let us forget to apply to all these beauties the distinc- 
tion between the beautiful and the sublime. There are, then, the 
beautiful and the sublime at once in nature, in ideas, in senti- 
ments, in actions. What an almost infinite variety in beauty ! 

After having enumerated all these differences, could we not 
reduce them ? They are incontestable ; but, in this diversity is 
there not unity ? Is there not a single beauty of which all par- 
ticular beauties are only reflections, shades, degrees, or degrada- 
tions ? 

Plotinus, in his treatise On the Beautiful? proposed to him- 
self this question. He asks — What is the beautiful in itself ? I 
see clearly that such or such a form is beautiful, that such or 
such an action is also beautiful ; but why and how are these two 
objects, so dissimilar, beautiful ? What is the common quality 
which, being found in these two objects, ranges them under the 
general idea of the beautiful % 

It is necessary to answer this question, or the theory of beauty 
is a maze without issue ; one applies the same name to the most 
diverse things, without understanding the real unity that author- 
izes this unity of name. 

Either the diversities which we have designated in beauty are 
such that it is impossible to discover their relation, or these diver- 



1 First Fnnead, book vi., in the work of M. B. Saint-IIillaire, on tho School 
of Alexandria, the translation of this morsel of Plotinus, p. 197. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 145 

sities are especially apparent, and have their harmony, their con- 
cealed unity. 

Is it pretended that this unity is a chimera ? Then physical 
beauty, moral beauty, and intellectual beauty, are strangers to 
each other. What, then, will the artist do ? He is surrounded 
by different beauties, and he must make a work ; for such is the 
recognized law of art. But if this unity that is imposed upon 
him is a factitious unity, if there are in nature only essentially dis- 
similar beauties, art deceives and lies to us. Let it be explained, 
then, how falsehood is the law of art. That cannot be ; the unity 
that art expresses, it must have somewhere caught a glimpse of, 
in order to transport it into its works. 

We neither retract the distinction between the beautiful and 
the sublime, nor the other distinctions just now indicated ; but it 
is necessary to re-unite after having distinguished them. These 
distinctions and these re-unions are not contradictory : the great 
law of beauty, like that of truth, is unity as well as variety. All 
is one, and all is diverse. We have divided beauty into three 
great classes — physical beauty, intellectual beauty, and moral 
beauty. We must now seek the unity of these three sorts of 
beauty. Now, we think that they resolve themselves into one 
and the same beauty, moral beauty, meaning by that, with moral 
beauty properly so called, all spiritual beauty. 

Let us put this opinion to the proof of facts. 

Place yourself before that statue of Apollo which is called 
Apollo Belvidere, and observe attentively what strikes you in 
that master-piece. Winkelmann, who was not a metaphysician, 
but a learned antiquarian, a man of taste without system, made 
a celebrated analysis of the Apollo. 1 It is curious to study it. 



1 Winkelmann has twice described the Apollo, History of Art among the 
Ancients, Paris, 1802, 3 vols., in 4to. Vol. i., book iv., chap, ill., Art among 
the Greeks: — " The Apollo of the Vatican offers ns that God in a movement 
of indignation against the serpent Python, which he has just hilled with ar- 
row-shots, and in a sentiment of contempt for a victory so little worthy of a 
divinity. The wise artist, who proposed to represent the most beautiful of 



146 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

What Winkelmann extols before all, is the character of divinity 
stamped upon the immortal youth that invests that beautiful 
body, upon the height, a little above that of man, upon the ma- 



tte gods, placed the anger in the nose, which, according to the ancients, 
was its seat ; and the disdain on the lips. He expressed the anger by the 
inflation of the nostrils, and the disdain by the elevation of the under lip, 
which causes the same movement in the chin." — Ibid., vol. ii., book iv., chap, 
vi., Art under the Emperors: — " Of all the antique statues that have escaped 
the fury of barbarians and the destructive hand of time, the statue of Apollo 
is, without contradiction, the most sublime. One would say that the artist 
composed a figure purely ideal, and employed matter only because it was 
necessary for him to execute and represent his idea. As much as Homer's 
description of Apollo surpasses the descriptions which other poets have un- 
dertaken after him, so much this statue excels all the figures of this god. 
Its height is above that of man, and its attitude proclaims the divine gran- 
deur with which it is filled. A perennial spring-time, like that which reigns 
in the happy fields of Elysium, clothes with lovable youth the beautiful 
body, and shines with sweetness over the noble structure of the limbs. In 
order to feel the merit of this chef-d'oeuvre of art, we must be penetrated with 
intellectual beauty, and become, if possible, the creatures of a celestial na- 
ture ; for there is nothing mortal in it, nothing subject to the wants of hu- 
manity. That body, whose forms are not interrupted by a vein, which is 
not agitated by a nerve, seems animated with a celestial spirit, which circu- 
lates like a sweet vapor in all the parts of that admirable figure. The god 
has just been pursuing Python, against which he has bent, for the first time, 
his formidable bow ; in his rapid course, he has overtaken him, and given 
him a mortal wo,und. Penetrated with the conviction of his power, and lost 
in a concentrated joy, his august look penetrates far into the infinite, and is 
extended far beyond his victory. Disdain- sits upon his lips ; the indigna- 
tion that he breathes distends his nostrils, and ascends to his eyebrows ; 
but an unchangeable serenity is painted on his brow, and his eye is full of 
sweetness, as though the Muses were caressing him. Among all the figures 
that remain to us of Jupiter, there is none in which the father of the gods 
approaches the grandeur with which he manifested himself to the intelli- 
gence of Homer; but in the traits of the Apollo Bclvidcre, we find the indi- 
vidual beauties of all the other divinities united, as in that of Pandora. The 
forehead is the forehead of Jupiter, inclosing the goddess of wisdom ; the 
eyebrows, by their movement, announce his supreme will; the large eyes 
are those of the queen of the gods, orbed with dignity, and the mouth is an 
image of that of Bacchus, where breathed voluptuousness. Like the tender 
branches of the vine, his beautiful looks flow around his head, as if they 
were lightly agitated by the zephyr's breath. They seem perfumed with 
the essence of the gods, and are eharinin^l.V arranged over his head by the 
hand of the Graces. At the sight of this marvel of art, I forget everything 
else, and my mind takes a supernatural disposition, fitted to judge of it with 
dignity; from admiration I pass to ecstasy; 1 feel my breast dilating and 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 147 

jestic altitude, upon the imperious movement, upon the ensemble, 
and all the details of the person. The forehead is indeed that of 
a god, — an unalterable placidity dwells upon it. Lower down, 
humanity reappears somewhat ; and that is very necessary, in 
order to interest humanity in the works of art. In that satisfied 
look, in the distension of the nostrils, in the elevation of the 
under lip, are at once felt anger mingled with disdain, pride of 
victory, and the little fatigue which it has cost. Weigh well 
each word of Winkelmann : you will find there a moral impres- 
sion. The tone of the learned antiquary is elevated, little by lit- 
tle, to enthusiasm, and his analysis becomes a hymn to spiritual 
beauty. 

Instead of a statue, observe a real and living man. Regard 
that man who, solicited by the strongest motives to sacrifice duty 
to fortune, triumphs over interest, after an heroic struggle, and 
sacrifices fortune to virtue. Regard him at the moment when he 
is about to take this magnanimous resolution ; his face will appear 
to you beautiful, because it expresses the beauty of his soul. Per- 
haps, under all other circumstances, the face of the man is common, 
even trivial ; here, illuminated by the soul which it manifests, it 
is ennobled, and takes an imposing character of beauty. So, the 
natural face of Socrates 1 contrasts strongly with the type of Gre- 
cian beauty ; but look at him on his death-bed, at the moment 
of drinking the hemlock, conversing with his disciples on the im- 
mortality of the soul, and his nice will appear to you sublime. 2 

At the highest point of moral grandeur, Socrates expires : — 

rising, like those who are filled with the spirit of prophecy ; I am transported 
to Delos, and the sacred groves of Syria, — places which Apollo honored with 
his presence : — the statue seems to be animated as it were with the beauty 
that sprung of old from the hands of Pygmalion. How can I describe thee, 
inimitable master-piece? For this it would be necessary that art itself 
should deign to inspire my pen. The traits that I have just sketched, I lay 
before thee, as those who came to crown the gods, put their crowns at their 
feet, not being able to reach their heads. 1 ' 

1 See the last part of the Banquet, the discourse of Alcibiades, p. 326 of 
vol. vi. of our translation. 

3 We here have in mind, and we avow it, the Socrates of David, which 



148 LECTUKE SEVENTH. 

you have before your eyes no longer any thing but his dead body ; 
the dead face preserves its beauty, as long as it preserves traces 
of the mind that animated it; but little by little the expression 
is extinguished or disappears ; the face then becomes vulgar and 
ugly. The expression of death is hideous or sublime, — hideous 
at the aspect of the decomposition of the matter that no longer 
retains the spirit, — sublime when it awakens in us the idea of 
eternity. 

Consider the figure of man in repose : it is more beautiful than 
that of an animal, the figure of an animal is more beautiful than 
the form of any inanimate object. It is because the human figure, 
even in the absence of virtue and genius, always reflects an intel- 
ligent and moral nature, it is because the figure of an animal 
reflects sentiment at least, and something of soul, if not the soul 
entire. If from man and the animal we descend to purely physi- 
cal nature, we shall still find beauty there, as long as we find 
there some shade of intelligence, I know not what, that awakens 
in us some thought, some sentiment. Do we arrive at some 
piece of matter that expresses nothing, that signifies nothing, 
neither is the idea of beauty applied to it. But every thing that 
exists is animated. Matter is shaped and penetrated by forces 
that are not material, and it obeys laws that attest an intelligence 
everywhere present. The most subtile chemical analysis does not 
reach a dead and inert nature, but a nature that is organized in 
its own way, that is neither deprived of forces nor laws. In the 
depths of the earth, as in the heights of the heavens, in a grain 
of sand as in a gigantic mountain, an immortal spirit shines 
through the thickest coverings. Let us contemplate nature with 
the eye of the soul as well as with the eye of the body : — every- 
where a moral expression will strike us, and the forms of things 



appears to us, the theatrical character being admitted, above its reputation. 
Besides Socrates, it is impossible not to admire Plato listening to his master, 
as it were from the bottom of his soul, without looking at him, with his back 
turned upon the scene that is passing, and lost in the contemplation of the 
intelligible world. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 149 

will impress us as symbols of thought. We have said that with 
man, and with the animal even, the figure is beautiful on account 
of the expression. But, when you are on the summit of the Alps, 
or before the immense Ocean, when you behold the rising or setting 
of the sun, at the beginning or the close of the day, do not these 
imposing pictures produce on you a moral effect ? Do all these 
grand spectacles appear only for the sake of appearing ? Do we 
not regard them as manifestations of an admirable power, intelli- 
gence, and wisdom ? And, thus to speak, is not the face of nature 
expressive like that of man ? 

Form cannot be simply a form, it must be the form of some- 
thing. Physical beauty is, then, the sign of an internal beauty, 
which is spiritual and moral beauty ; and this is the foundation, 
the principle, the unity of the beautiful. 1 

All the beauties that we have just enumerated and reduced 
compose what is called the really beautiful. But, above real 
beauty, is a beauty of another order — ideal beauty. The ideal 
resides neither in an individual, nor in a collection of individuals. 
Nature or experience furnishes us the occasion of conceiving it, 
but it is essentially distinct. Let it once be conceived, and all 
natural figures, though never so beautiful, are only images of a 
superior beauty which they do not realize. Give me a beautiful 
action, and I will imagine one still more beautiful. The Apollo 
itself is open to criticism in more than one respect. The ideal 
continually recedes as we approach it. Its last termination is in 
the infinite, that is to say, in God ; or, to speak more correctly, 
the true and absolute ideal is nothing else than God himself. 

1 We are fortunate in finding this theory, which is so dear to us, confirmed 
by the authority of one of the severest and most circumspect minds : — it 
may be seen in Reid, 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 23. The Scotch philosopher 
terminates his Essay on Taste with these words, which happily remind us of 
the thought and manner of Plato himself: — " Whether the reasons that I 
have given to prove that sensible beauty is only the image of moral beauty 
appear sufficient or riot, I hope that my doctrine, in attempting to unite the 
terrestrial Venus more closely to the celestial Venus, will not seem to have 
for its object to abase the first, and render her less worthy of the homage 
that mankind has always paid her." 



150 LECTUKE SEVENTH. 

God, being the principle of all things, must for this reason be 
that of perfect beauty, and, consequently, of all natural beauties 
that express it more or less imperfectly ; he is the principle of 
beauty, both as author of the physical world and as father of the 
intellectual and moral world. 

Is it not necessary to be a slave of the senses and of appear- 
ances in order to stop at movements, at forms, at sounds, at col- 
ors, whose harmonious combinations produce the beauty of this 
visible world, and not to conceive behind this scene so magnifi- 
cent and well regulated, the orderer, the geometer, the supreme 
artist ? 

Physical beauty serves as an envelope to intellectual and moral 
beauty. 

What can be the principle of intellectual beauty, that splendor 
of the true, except the principle of all truth ? 

Moral beauty comprises, as we shall subsequently see, 1 two dis- 
tinct elements, equally but diversely beautiful, justice and charity, 
respect and love of men. He who expresses in his conduct jus- 
tice and charity, accomplishes the most beautiful of all works ; 
the good man is, in his way, the greatest of all artists. But 
what shall we say of him who is the very substance of justice 
and the exhaustless source of love ? If our moral nature is beau- 
tiful, what must be the beauty of its author ! His justice and 
goodness are everywhere, both in us and out of us. His justice 
is the moral order that no human law makes, that all human 
laws are forced to express, that is preserved and perpetuated in 
the world by its own force. Let us descend into ourselves, and 
consciousness will attest the divine justice in the peace and con 
tentment that accompany virtue, in the troubles and tortures thai 
are the invariable punishments of vice and crime. How many 
times, and with what eloquence, have men celebrated the indefat 
igable solicitude of Providence, its benefits everywhere manifest 
in the smallest as well as in the greatest phenomena of nature, 

1 Tart iii., lecture 15. 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 151 

which we forget so easily because they have become so familiar 
to us, but which, on reflection, call forth our mingled admiratiua 
and gratitude, and proclaim a good God, full of love for his 
creatures ! 

Thus, God is the principle of the three orders of beauty that 
we have distinguished, physical beauty, intellectual beauty, moral 
beauty. 

In him also are reunited the two great forms of the beautiful 
distributed in each of these three orders, to wit, the beautiful and 
the sublime. God is, par excellence, the beautiful — for what ob- 
ject satisfies more all our faculties, our reason, our imagination, 
our heart ! He offers to reason the highest idea, beyond which 
it has nothing more to seek ; to imagination the most ravishing- 
contemplation ; to the heart a sovereign object of love. He is, 
then, perfectly beautiful ; but is he not sublime also in other 
ways ? If he extends the horizon of thought, it is to confound 
it in the abyss of his greatness. If the soul blooms at the spec- 
tacle of his goodness, has it not also reason to be affrighted at 
the idea of his justice, which is not less present to it ? God is at 
once mild and terrible. At the same time that he is the life, the 
light, the movement, the ineffable grace of visible and finite na- 
ture, he is also called the Eternal, the Invisible, the Infinite, the 
Absolute Unity, and the Being of beings. Do not these awful 
attributes, as certain as the first, produce in the highest degree in 
the imagination and the soul that melancholy emotion excited by 
the sublime ? Yes, God is for us the type and source of the two 
great forms of beauty, because he is to us at once an impenetrable 
enigma and still the clearest word that we are able to find for all 
enigmas. Limited beings as we are, we comprehend nothing in 
comparison with that which is without limits, and we are able to 
explain nothing without that same thing which is without limits. 
By the being that we possess, we have some idea of the infinite 
being of God ; by the nothingness that is in us, we lose ourselves 
in the being of God ; and thus always forced to recur to him in 
order to explain any thing, and always thrown back within our- 



152 LECTURE SEVENTH. 

selves under the weight of his infinitude, we experience by turns, 
or rather at the same time, for this God who raises and casts us 
down, a sentiment of irresistible attraction and astonishment, not 
to say insurmountable terror,- which he alone can cause and 
allay, because he alone is the unity of the sublime and the beau- 
tiful. 

Thus absolute being, which is both absolute unity and infinite 
variety, — God, is necessarily the last reason, the ultimate foun- 
dation, the completed ideal of all beauty. This is the marvellous 
beauty that Diotimus had caught a glimpse of, and thus paints 
to Socrates in the Banquet : 

" Eternal beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from 
decay as well as increase, which is not beautiful in such a part 
and ugly in such another, beautiful only, at such a time, in such 
a place, in such a relation, beautiful for some, ugly for others, 
beauty that has no sensible form, no visage, no hands, nothing 
corporeal, which is not such a thought or such a particular 
science, which resides not in any being different from itself, as an 
animal, the earth, or the heavens, or any other thing, which is 
absolutely identical and invariable by itself, in which all other 
beauties participate, in such a way, nevertheless, that their birth 
or their destruction neither diminishes nor increases, nor in the 

least changes it ! In order to arrive at this perfect beauty, 

it is necessary to commence with the beauties of this lower world, 
and, the eyes being fixed upon the supreme beauty, to elevate our- 
selves unceasingly towards it, by passing, thus to speak, through 
all the degrees of the scale, from a single beautiful body to two, 
from two to all others, from beautiful bodies to beautiful senti- 
ments, from beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until from 
thought to thought we arrive at the highest thought, which has 
no other object than the beautiful itself, until we end by knowing 
it as it is in itself. 

"0 my dear Socrates," continued the stranger of Mantinea, 
" that which can give value to this life is the spectacle of the 
eternal beauty. . . . What would be the destiny of a mortal to 



THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. 153 

whom it should be granted to contemplate the beautiful without 
alloy, in its purity and simplicity, no longer clothed with the flesh 
and hues of humanity, and with all those vain charms that are 
condemned to perish, to whom it should be given to see face to 
face, under its sole form, the divine beauty !" * 

1 Vol vi. of our translation, p. 316-318. 



LECTUKE VIII. 

ON ART. 

Genius : — its attribute is creative power. — Eefutation of the opinion that art 
is the imitation of nature. — M. Emeric David, and M. Quatremere de 
Quincy. — Eefutation of the theory of illusion. That dramatic art has not 
solely for its end to excite the passions of terror and pity. — Nor even di- 
rectly the moral and religious sentiment. — The proper and direct object of 
art is to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful ; this idea 
and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the affinity between the 
beautiful and the good, and by the relation of ideal beauty to its principle, 
which is God. — True mission of art. 

Man is not made only to know and love the beautiful in the 
works of nature, he is endowed with the power of reproducing it. 
At the sight of a natural beauty, whatever it may be, physical or 
moral, his first need is to feel and admire. He is penetrated, 
ravished, as it were overwhelmed with the sentiment of beauty. 
But when the sentiment is energetic, he is not a long time sterile. 
We wish to see again, we wish to feel again what caused us so 
vivid a pleasure, and for that end we attempt to revive the beauty 
that charmed us, not as it was, but as our imagination represents 
it to us. Hence a work original and peculiar to man, a work of 
art. Art is the free reproduction of beauty, and the power in us 
capable of reproducing it is called genius. 

What faculties are used in this free reproduction of the beauti- 
ful ? The same that serve to recognize and feel it. Taste carried 
to the highest degree, if you always join to it an additional ele- 
ment, is genius. What is this element ? 

Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is called 
taste, — imagination, sentiment, reason. 



ON AET. 155 

These three faculties are certainly necessary for genius, but 
they are not sufficient for it. What essentially distinguishes 
genius from taste is the attribute of creative power. Taste feels, 
judges, discusses, analyzes, but does not invent. Genius is, before 
all, inventive and creative. The man of genius is not the master 
of the power that is in him ; it is by the ardent, irresistible need 
of expressing what he feels, that he is a man of genius. He suf- 
fers by withholding the sentiments, or images, or thoughts, that 
agitate his breast. It has been said that there is no superior man 
without some grain of folly ; but this folly, like that of the cross, 
is the divine part of reason. This mysterious power Socrates 
called his demon. Voltaire called it the devil in the body ; he 
demanded it even in a comedian in order to be a comedian of 
genius. Give to it what name you please, it is certain that there 
is a I-know-not-what that inspires genius, that also torments it 
until it has delivered itself of what consumes it ; until, by ex- 
pressing them, it has solaced its pains and its joys, its emotions, 
its ideas ; until its reveries have become living works. Thus two 
things characterize genius ; at first, the vivacity of the need it has 
of producing, then the power of producing ; for the need without 
the power is only a malady that resembles genius, but is not it. 
Genius is above all, is essentially, the power of doing, of inventing, 
of creating. Taste is contented with observing, with admiring. 
False genius, ardent and impotent imagination, consumes itself in 
sterile dreams and produces nothing, at least nothing great. Ge- 
nius alone has the power to convert conceptions into creations. 

If genius creates it does not imitate. 

But genius, it is said, is then superior to nature, since it does 
not imitate it. Nature is the work of God ; man is then the rival 
of God. 

The answer is very simple. No, genius is not the rival of God ; 
but it is the interpreter of him. Nature expresses him in its way, 
human genius expresses him in its own way. 

Let us stop a moment at that question so much discussed, — 
whether art is any thing else than the imitation of nature. 



156 LECTURE EIGHTH. 

Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation ; for absolute crea- 
tion belongs only to God. Where can genius find the elements 
upon which it works, except in nature, of which it forms a part ? 
But does it limit itself to the reproduction of them as nature fur- 
nishes them to it, without adding any thing to them which belongs 
to itself? Is it only a copier of reality ? Its sole merit, then, is 
that of the fidelity of the copy. And what labor is more sterile 
than that of copying works essentially inimitable on account of 
the life with which they are endowed, in order to obtain an indif- 
ferent image of them ? If art is a servile pupil, it is condemned 
never to be any thing but an impotent pupil. 

The true artist feels and profoundly admires nature ; but every 
thing in nature is not equally admirable. As we have just said, 
it has something by which it infinitely surpasses art — its life. 
Besides that, art can, in its turn, surpass nature, on the condition 
of not wishing to imitate it too closely. Every natural object, 
however beautiful, is defective on some side. Every thing that is 
real is imperfect. Here, the horrible and the hideous are united 
to the sublime ; there, elegance and grace are separated from 
grandeur and force. The traits of beauty are scattered and di- 
verse. To reunite them arbitrarily, to borrow from such a face a 
mouth, eyes from such another, without any rule that governs 
this choice and directs these borrowings, is to compose monsters ; 
to admit a rule, is already to admit an ideal different from all in- 
dividuals. It is this ideal that the true artist forms to himself in 
studying nature. Without nature, he never would have conceived 
this ideal ; but with this ideal, he judges nature herself, rectifies 
her, and dares undertake to measure himself with her. 

The ideal is the artist's object of passionate contemplation. 
Assiduously and silently meditated, unceasingly purified by re- 
flection and vivified by sentiment, it warms genius and inspires it 
with the irresistible need of seeing it realized and living. For 
this end, genius takes in nature all the materials that can serve 
it, and applying to them its powerful hand, as Michael Angelo 
impressed his chisel upon the docile marble, makes of them works 



ON AKT. 157 

that have no model in nature, that imitate nothing else than the 
ideal dreamed of or conceived, that are in some sort a second 
creation inferior to the first in individuality and life, but much 
superior to it, we do not fear to say, on account of the intellectual 
and moral beauty with which it is impressed. 

Moral beauty is the foundation of all true beauty. This foun- 
dation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art disengages 
it, and gives to it forms more transparent. On this account, art, 
when it knows well its power and its resources, institutes with 
nature a contest in which it may have the advantage. 

Let us establish well the end of art : it is precisely where its 
power lies. The end of art is the expression of moral beauty, by 
the aid of physical beauty. The latter is only a symbol of the 
former. In nature, this symbol is often obscure : art in bringing 
it to light attains effects that nature does not always produce. 
Nature may please more, for, once more, it possesses in an in- 
comparable degree what makes the great charm of imagination 
and sight — life ; art touches more, because in expressing, above 
all, moral beauty, it addresses itself more directly to the source 
of profound emotions. Art can be more pathetic than nature, 
and the pathetic is the sign and measure of great beauty. 

Two extremes are equally dangerous — a lifeless ideal, or the 
absence of the ideal. Either we copy the model, and are want- 
ing in true beauty, or we work de t£te, and fall into an ideality 
without character. Genius is a ready and sure perception of the 
right proportion in which the ideal and the natural, form and 
thought, ought to be united. This union is the perfection of 
art : chefs-cVoeuvre are produced by observing it. 

It is important, in my opinion, to follow this rule in teaching- 
art. It is asked whether pupils should begin with the study of 
the ideal or the real. I do not hesitate to answer, — by both. 
Nature herself never offers the o-eneral without the individual, 
nor the individual without the general. Every figure is composed 
of individual traits which distinguish it from all others, and make 
its own looks, and, at the same time, it has general traits which 



158 LECTURE EIGHTH. 

constitute what is called the human figure. These general traits 
are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure is the type, that 
are given to the pupil that is beginning in the art of design to 
trace. It would also be good, I believe, in order to preserve him 
from the dry and abstract, to exercise him early in copying some 
natural object, especially a living figure. This would be putting 
pupils to the true school of nature. They would thus become 
accustomed never to sacrifice either of the two essential elements 
of the beautiful, either of the two imperative conditions of art. 

But, in uniting these two elements, these two conditions, it is 
necessary to distinguish them, and to know how to put them in 
their place. There is no true idea] without determinate form ; 
there is no unity without variety, no genus without individuals ; 
but, in fine, the foundation of the beautiful is the idea ; what 
makes art is before all, the realization of the idea, and not the 
imitation of such or such a particular form. 

At the commencement of our century, the Institute of France 
offered a prize for the best answer to the following question : 
What were the causes of the perfection of the antique sculpture, 
and what would be the best means of attaining it ? The success- 
ful competitor, M. Emeric David, 1 maintained the opinion then 
dominant, that the assiduous study of natural beauty had alone 
conducted the antique art to perfection, and that thus the imita- 
tion of nature was the only route to reach the same perfection. 
A man whom I do not fear to compare with Winkelmann, the 
future author of the Olympic Jupiter,' 1 M. Quatremere de Quincy, 
in some ingenious and profound disquisitions, 3 combated the doc- 
trine of the laureate, and defended the cause of ideal beauty. It 
is impossible to demonstrate more decidedly, by the entire history 
of Greek sculpture, and by authentic texts from the greatest cri- 



1 Recherches sur V Art Statvaire. Paris, 1805. 

a Paris, 1815, in folio, an eminent work that will subsist even when time 
shall have destroyed some of its details. 

8 Since reprinted under the title of Essals sur VIdeal dans ses Applications 
Pratiques. Paris, 1837. 



OX ABT. 159 

tiques of antiquity, that the process of art among the Greeks "was 
not the imitation of nature, either by a particular model, or by 
several, the most beautiful model being always very imperfect, 
and several models not being able to compose a single beauty. 
The true process of the Greek art was the representation of an 
ideal beauty which nature scarcely possessed more in Greece than 
among us. which it could not then offer to the artist. We regret 
that the honorable laureate, since become a member of the Insti- 
tute, pretended that this expression of ideal beauty, if it had been 
known by the Greeks, would have meant visible beauty, because 
ideal comes from sloog, which signifies only, according to M. 
Enierie David, a form seen by the eye. Plato would have been 
much surprised at this exclusive interpretation of the word sldog. 
M. Quatremere de Quincy confounds his unequal adversary by 
two admirable texts, one from the Timceus, where Plato marks 
with precision in what the true artist is superior to the ordinary 
artist, the other at the commencement of the Orator, where 
Cicero explains the manner in which great artists work, in refer- 
ring to the manner of Phidias, that is to say, the most perfect 
master of the most perfect epoch of art. 

"The artist. 1 who, with eye fixed upon the immutable being, 
and using such a model, reproduces its idea and its excellence, 
cannot fail to produce a whole whose beauty is complete, whilst 
he who fixes his eye upon what is transitory, with this perishable 
model will make nothing beautiful." 

" Phidias.- that great artist, when he made the form of Jupiter 
or Minerva, did not contemplate a model a resemblance of which 
he would express ; but in the depth of his soul resided a perfect 
type of beauty, upon which he fixed his look, which guided his 
hand and his art." 



1 Translation of Plato, vol. xii., Tim<?u.$, p. 116. 

3 Orator: "Xeque enim ille artifex (Phidias) cum faeeret Jovis formara 
ant Minerva, eontemplabatur aliquem a quo similitudinem duceret : sod 
ipsius in mente insidebat species pulchritudinis eximia qus?dam, quam iutu- 
ens, in eaque defixus, ad illius similitudinem artem et mauum dirigebat.*' 



160 LECTURE EIGHTH. 

Is not this process of Phidias precisely that which Raphael de- 
scribes in the famous letter to Castiglione, which he declares that he 
followed himself for the Galatea ? * " As," he says, " I am destitute 
of beautiful models, I use a certain ideal which I form for myself." 

There is another theory which comes back, by a circuit, to 
imitation : it is that which makes illusion the end of art. If this 
theory be true, the ideal beauty of painting is a tromp-Vceil? and 
its master-piece is the grapes of Zeuxis that the birds came and 
pecked at. The height of art in a theatrical piece would be to 
persuade you that you are in the presence of reality. What is 
true in this opinion is, that a work of art is beautiful only on the 
condition of being life-like, and, for example, the law of dramatic 
art is not to put on the stage pale phantoms of the past, but per- 
sonages borrowed from imagination or history, as you like, but 
animated, endowed with passion, speaking and acting like men, 
and not like shades. It is human nature that is to be represented 
to itself under a magic light that does not disfigure it, but en- 
nobles it. This magic is the very genius of art. It lifts us above 
the miseries that besiege us, and transports us to regions where 
we still find ourselves, for we never wish to lose sight of our- 
selves, but where we find ourselves transformed to our advantage, 
where all the imperfections of reality have given place to a cer- 
tain perfection, where the language that we speak is more equal 
and elevated, where persons are more beautiful, where the ugly 
is not admitted, and all this while duly respecting history, espe- 
cially without ever going beyond the imperative conditions of 
human nature. Has art forgotten human nature ? it has passed 
beyond its end, it has not attained it; it has brought forth 
nothing but chimeras without interest for our soul. Has it been 
too human, too real, too nude ? it has fallen short of its end ; it 
has then attained it no better. 



1 Eaccolta di lett. Sulla pitt., l., p. 83. " Essendo carestia e de 1 buom gm~ 
did e di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea die mi vlene alia mente." 

2 " A picture representing a broken glass over several subjects painted on 
the canvas, by which the eye is deceived." 



ON ART. 161 

Elusion is so little the end of art, that it may be complete and 
have no charm. Thus, in the interest of illusion, theatrical men 
have taken great pains in these latter times to secure historical 
accuracy of costume. This is all very well ; but it is not the 
most important thing. Had you found, and lent to the actor 
who plays the part of Brutus, the very costume that of old the 
Roman hero wore, it would touch true connoisseurs very little. 
This is not all ; when the illusion goes too far, the sentiment of 
art disappears in order to give place to a sentiment purely natu- 
ral, sometimes insupportable. If I believed that Iphegenia were 
in fact on the point of being immolated by her father at a dis- 
tance of twenty paces from me, I should leave the theatre trem- 
bling with horror. If the Ariadne that I see and hear, were the 
true Ariadne who is about to be betrayed by her sister, in that 
pathetic scene where the poor woman, who already feels herself 
less loved, asks who then robs her of the heart, once so tender, of 
Theseus, I would do as the young Englishman did, who cried 
out, sobbing and trying to spring upon the stage, " It is Phedre, 
it is Phedre !" as if he would warn and save Ariadne. 

But, it is said, is it not the aim of the poet to excite pity and 
terror ? Yes ; but at first in a certain measure ; then he must 
mix with them some other sentiment that tempers them, or 
makes them serve another end. If the aim of dramatic art were 
only to excite in the highest degree pity and terror, art would be 
the powerless rival of nature. All the misfortunes represented 
on the stage are very feeble in comparison with those sad specta- 
cles which we may see every day. The first hospital is fuller of 
pity and terror than all the theatres in the world. What should 
the poet do in the theory that we combat ? He should transfer 
to the stage the greatest possible reality, and move us powerfully 
by shocking our senses with the sight of frightful pains. The 
great resort of the pathetic would then be the representation of 
death, especially that of the greatest torture. Quite on the con- 
trary, there is an end of art when sensibility is too much excited. 
To take, again, an example that we have already employed, what 



162 LECTUKE EIGHTH. 

constitutes the beauty of a tempest, of a shipwreck ? What at- 
tracts us to those great scenes of nature ? It is certainly not pity 
and terror, — these poignant and lacerating sentiments would 
much sooner keep us away. An emotion very different from 
these is necessary, which triumphs over us, in order to retain us 
by the shore ; this emotion is the pure sentiment of the beautiful 
and the sublime, excited and kept alive by the grandeur of the 
spectacle, by the vast extent of the sea, the rolling of the foaming 
waves, and the imposing sound of the thunder. But do we 
think for a single instant that there are in the midst of the sea 
the unfortunate who are suffering, and are, perhaps, about to 
perish ? From that moment the spectacle becomes to us insup- 
portable. It is so in art. "Whatever sentiment it proposes to 
excite in us, must always be tempered and governed by that of 
the beautiful. If it only produces pity or terror beyond a certain 
limit, especially physical pity or terror, it revolts, and no longer 
charms ; it loses the effect that belongs to it in exchange for a 
foreign and vulgar effect. 

For this same reason, I cannot accept another theory, which, 
confounding the sentiment of the beautiful with the moral and 
religious sentiment, puts art in the service of religion and morals, 
and gives it for its end to make us better and elevate us to God. 
There is here an essential distinction to be made. If all beauty 
covers a moral beauty, if the ideal mounts unceasingly towards 
the infinite, art, which expresses ideal beauty, purifies the soul in 
elevating it towards the infinite, that is to say, towards God. 
Art, then, produces the perfection of the soul, but it produces it 
indirectly. The philosopher who investigates effects and causes, 
knows what is the ultimate principle of the beautiful and its cer- 
tain, although remote, effects. But the artist is before all things 
an artist; what animates him is the sentiment of the beautiful ; 
what he wishes to make pass into the soul of the spectator is the 
same sentiment that fills his own. He confides himself to the 
virtue of beauty ; he fortifies it with all the power, all the charm 
of the ideal ; it must then do its own work ; the artist has done 



ON ART. 163 

his when he has procured for some noble souls the exquisite sen- 
timent of beauty. This pure and disinterested sentiment is a 
noble ally of the moral and religious sentiments; it awakens, 
preserves, and develops them, but it is a distinct and special sen- 
timent. So art, which is founded on this sentiment, which is 
inspired by it, which expands it, is in its turn an independent 
power. It is naturally associated with all that ennobles the soul, 
with morals and religion ; but it springs only from itself. 

Let us confine our thought strictly within its proper limits. 
In vindicating the independence, the proper dignity, and the par- 
ticular end of art, we do not intend to separate it from religion, 
from morals, from country. Art draws its inspirations from these 
profound sources, as well as from the ever open source of nature. 
But it is not less true that art, the state, religion, are powers 
which have each their world apart and their own effects ; they 
mutually help each other; they should not serve each other. 
As soon as one of them wanders from its end, it errs, and is degra- 
ded. Does art blindly give itself up to the orders of religion and 
the state ? In losing its liberty, it loses its charm and its empire. 

Ancient Greece and modern Italy are continually cited as tri- 
umphant examples of what the alliance of art, religion, and the 
state can do. Nothing is more true, if the question is concerning 
their union ; nothing is more false, if the question is concerning 
the servitude of art. Art in Greece was so little the slave of 
religion, that it little by little modified the symbols, and, to a cer- 
tain extent, the spirit itself, by its free representations. There is 
a long distance between the divinities that Greece received from 
Egypt and those of which it has left immortal exemplars. Are 
those primitive artists and poets, as Homer and Dedalus are 
called, strangers to this change? And in the most beautiful 
epoch of art, did not ^Eschylus and Phidias carry a great liberty 
into the religious scenes which they exposed to the gaze of the 
people, in the theatre, or in front of the temples ? In Italy as in 
Greece, as everywhere, art is at first in the hands of priesthoods 
and governments ; but, as it increases its importance and is de- 



164: LECTURE EIGHTH. 

veloped, it more and more conquers its liberty. Men speak of 
the faith that animated the artists and vivified their works ; that 
is true of the time of Giotto and Ciambue ; but after Angelico 
de Fiesole, at the end of the fifteenth century, in Italy, I perceive 
especially the faith of art in itself and the worship of beauty. 
Raphael was about to become a cardinal ;*« yes, but always paint- 
ing Galatea, and without quitting Fornarine. Once more, let us 
exaggerate nothing ; let us distinguish, not separate ; let us unite 
art, religion, and country, but let not their union injure the lib- 
erty of each. Let us be thoroughly penetrated with the thought, 
that art is also to itself a kind of religion. God manifests himself to 
us by the idea of the true, by the idea of the good, by the idea 
of the beautiful. Each one of them leads to God, because it 
comes from him. True beauty is ideal beauty, and ideal beauty 
is a reflection of the infinite. So, independently of all official 
alliance with religion and morals, art is by itself essentially reli- 
gious and moral ; for, far from wanting its own law, its own 
genius, it everywhere expresses in its works eternal beauty. 
Bound on all sides to matter by inflexible laws, working upon 
inanimate stone, upon uncertain and fugitive sounds, upon words 
of limited and finite signification, art communicates to them, with 
the precise form that is addressed to such or such a sense, a mys- 
terious character that is addressed to the imagination and the 
soul, takes them away from reality, and bears them sweetly or 
violently into unknown regions. Every work of art, whatever 
may be its form, small or great, figured, sung, or uttered, — every 
work of art, truly beautiful or sublime, throws the soul into a 
gentle or severe reverie that elevates it towards the infinite. The 
infinite is the common limit after which the soul aspires upon the 
wings of imagination as well as reason, by the route of the sub- 
lime and the beautiful, as well as by that of the true and the good. 
The emotion that the beautiful produces turns the soul from this 
world ; it is the beneficent emotion that art produces for humanity. 

1 Vassari, Vie de Raphael. 



LECTURE IX. 

THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 

Expression is the general law of art. — Division of arts. — Distinction between 
liberal arts and trades. — Eloquence itself, philosophy, and history do not 
make a part of the fine arts. — That the arts gain nothing by encroaching 
upon each other, and usurping each other's means and processes. — Classi- 
fication of the arts : — its true principle is expression. — Comparison of arts 
with each other. — Poetry the first of arts. 

A resume of the last lecture would be a definition of art, of its 
end and law. Art is the free reproduction of the beautiful, not of a 
single natural beauty, but of ideal beauty, as the human imagina- 
tion conceives it by the aid of data which nature furnishes it. 
The ideal beauty envelops the infinite : — the end of art is, then, 
to produce works that, like those of nature, or even in a still 
higher degree, may have the charm of the infinite. But how 
and by what illusion can we draw the infinite from the finite ? 
This is the difficulty of art, and its glory also. What bears us 
towards the infinite in natural beauty ? The ideal side of this 
beauty. The ideal is the mysterious ladder that enables the soul 
to ascend from the finite to the infinite. The artist, then, must 
devote himself to the representation of the ideal. Every thing 
has its ideal. The first care of the artist will be, then, whatever 
he does, to penetrate at first to the concealed ideal of his subject, 
for his subject has an ideal, — in order to render it, in the next 
place, more or less striking to the senses and the soul, according 
to the conditions which the very materials that he employs — the 
stone, the color, the sound, the language — impose on him. 

So, to express the ideal of the infinite in one way or another, ia 
the law of art ; and all the arts are such only by their relation to 



166 LECTUKE NINTH. 

the sentiment of the beautiful and the infinite which they awa- 
ken in the soul, by the aid of that high quality of every work of 
art that is called expression. 

Expression is essentially ideal : what expression tries to make 
felt, is not what the eye can see and the hand touch, evidently it 
is something invisible and impalpable. 

The problem of art is to reach the soul through the body. Art 
offers to the senses forms, colors, sounds, words, so arranged that 
they excite in the soul, concealed behind the senses, the inex- 
pressible emotion of beauty. 

Expression is addressed to the soul as form is addressed to the 
senses. Form is the obstacle of expression, and, at the same 
time, is its imperative, necessary, only means. By working upon 
form, by bending it to its service, by dint of care, patience, and 
genius, art succeeds in converting an obstacle into a means. 

By their object, all arts are equal ; all are arts only because 
they express the invisible. It cannot be too often repeated, that 
expression is the supreme law of art. The thing to express is 
always the same, — it is the idea, the spirit, the soul, the invisible, 
the infinite. But, as the question is concerning the expression of 
this one and the same thing, by addressing ourselves to the senses 
which are diverse, the difference of the senses divides art into dif- 
ferent arts. 

We have seen, that, of the five senses which have been given 
to man, 1 three — taste, smell, and touch — are incapable of pro- 
ducing in us the sentiment of beauty. Joined to the other two, 
they may contribute to the understanding of this sentiment ; but 
alone and by themselves they cannot produce it. Taste judges 
of the agreeable, not of the beautiful. No sense is less allied to 
the soul and more in the service of the body ; it flatters, it serves 
the grossest of all masters, the stomach. If smell sometimes 
Beems to participate in the sentiment of the beautiful, it is be- 
cause the odor is exhaled from an object that is already beautiful, 

1 Lecture 6. 



THE DIFFEEENT ARTS. 167 

that is beautiful for some other reason. Thus the rose is beau- 
tiful for its graceful form, for the varied splendor of its colors ; 
its odor is agreeable, it is not beautiful. Finally, it is not touch 
alone that judges of the regularity of forms, but touch enlight- 
ened by sight. 

There remain two senses to which all the world concedes the 
privilege of exciting in us the idea and the sentiment of the beau- 
tiful. They seem to be more particularly in the service of the 
soul. The sensations which they give have something purer, 
more intellectual. They are less indispensable for the material 
preservation of the individual. They contribute to the embellish- 
ment rather than to the sustaining of life. They procure us 
pleasures in which our personality seems less interested and more 
self-forgetful. To these two senses, then, art should be addressed, 
is addressed, in fact, in order to reach the soul. Hence the 
division of arts into two great classes, — arts addressed to hearing, 
arts addressed to sight ; on the one hand, music and poetry ; on 
the other, painting, with engraving, sculpture, architecture, gar- 
dening. 

It will, perhaps, seem strange that we rank among the arts 
neither eloquence, nor history, nor philosophy. 

The arts are called the fine arts, because their sole object is to 
produce the disinterested emotion of beauty, without regard to 
the utility either of the spectator or the artist. They are also 
called the liberal arts, because they are the arts of free men and 
not of slaves, which affranchise the soul, charm and ennoble ex- 
istence ; hence the sense and origin of those expressions of anti- 
quity, artes liberates, artes ingenuce. There are arts without no- 
bility, whose end is practical and material utility ; they are called 
trades, such as that of the stove-maker and the mason. True art 
may be joined to them, may even shine in them, but only in the 
accessories and the details. 

Eloquence, history, philosophy, are certainly high employments 
of intelligence ; they have their dignity, their eminence, which 
nothing surpasses, but rigorously speaking, they are not arts. 



168 LECTURE NINTH. 

Eloquence does not propose to itself to produce in the soul of 
the auditors the disinterested sentiment of beauty. It may also 
produce this effect, but without having sought it. Its direct 
end, which it can subordinate to no other, is to convince, to per- 
suade. Eloquence has a client which before all it must save or 
make triumph. It matters little, whether this client be a man, a 
people, or an idea. Fortunate is the orator if he elicits the ex- 
pression : That is beautiful ! for it is a noble homage rendered to 
his talent ; unfortunate is he if he does not elicit this, for he has 
missed his end. The two great types of political and religious 
eloquence, Demosthenes in antiquity, Bossuet among the mod- 
erns, think only of the interest of the cause confided to their 
genius, the sacred cause of country and that of religion ; whilst 
at bottom Phidias and Raphael work to make beautiful things. 
Let us hasten to say, what the names of Demosthenes and Bos- 
suet command us to say, that true eloquence, very different from 
that of rhetoric, disdains certain means of success ; it asks no 
more than to please, but without any sacrifice unworthy of it ; 
every foreign ornament degrades it. Its proper character is sim- 
plicity, earnestness — I do not mean affected earnestness, a de- 
signed and artful gravity, the worst of all deceptions — I mean 
true earnestness, that springs from sincere and profound convic- 
tion. This is what Socrates understood by true eloquence. 1 

As much must be said of history and philosophy. The phi- 
losopher speaks and writes. Can he, then, like the orator, find 
accents which make truth enter the soul, colors and forms that 
make it shine forth evident and manifest to the eyes of intelli- 
gence ? It would be betraying his cause to neglect the means 
that can serve it ; but the profoundest art is here only a means, 
the aim of philosophy is elsewhere ; whence it follows that phi- 
losophy is not an art. Without doubt, Plato is a great artist ; 
he is the peer of Sophocles and Phidias, as Pascal is sometimes 



1 See the Gorgias, with the Argument, vol. iii. of our translation of 
1'lato. 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 169 

the rival of Demosthenes and Bossuet ;* but both would have 
blushed if they had discovered at the bottom of their soul another 
design, another aim than the service of truth and virtue. 

History does not relate for the sake of relating ; it does not 
paint for the sake of painting ; it relates and paints the past that 
it may be the living lesson of the future. It proposes to instruct 
new generations by the experience of those who have gone before 
them, by exhibiting to them a faithful picture of great and impor- 
tant events, with their causes and their effects, with general de- 
signs and particular passions, with the faults, virtues, and crimes 
that are found mingled together in human things. It teaches 
the excellence of prudence, courage, and great thoughts pro- 
foundly meditated, constantly pursued, and executed with mod- 
eration and force. It shows the vanity of immoderate preten- 
sions, the power of wisdom and virtue, the impotence of folly and 
crime. Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus undertake any thing 
else than procuring new emotions for an idle curiosity or a worn- 
out imagination ; they doubtless desire to interest and attract, 
but more to instruct ; they are the avowed masters of statesmen 
and the preceptors of mankind. 

The sole object of art is the beautiful. Art abandons itself as 
soon as it shuns this. It is often constrained to make conces- 
sions to circumstances, to external conditions that are imposed 
upon it ; but it must always retain a just liberty. Architecture 
and the art of gardening are the least free of arts ; they are 
subjected to unavoidable obstacles ; it belongs to the genius of 
the artist to govern these obstacles, and even to draw from them 
happy effects, as the poet turns the slavery of metre and rhyme 
into a source of unexpected beauties. Extreme liberty may 
carry art to a caprice which degrades it, as chains too heavy 
crush it. It is the death of architecture to subject it to conve- 

1 There is a Provincial that for vehemence can be compared only to the 
PMlipics, and its fragment on the infinite has the grandeur and magnificence 
of Bossuet. See our work on the Thoughts of Pascal, 4th Series, Literature, 
vol. i. 

8 



170 LECTUKE NINTH. 

nience, to comfort. Is the architect obliged to subordinate gen- 
eral effect and the proportions of the edifice to such or such a 
particular end that is prescribed to him ? He takes refuge in 
details, in pediments, in friezes, in all the parts that have not 
utility for a special object, and in them he becomes a true artist. 
Sculpture and painting, especially music and poetry, are freer 
than architecture and the art of gardening. One can also shackle 
them, but they disengage themselves more easily. 

Similar by their common end, all the arts differ by the partic- 
ular effects which they produce, and by the processes which 
they employ. They gain nothing by exchanging their means 
and confounding the limits that separate them. I bow before 
the authority of antiquity ; but, perhaps, through habit and a 
remnant of prejudice, I have some difficulty in representing to 
myself with pleasure statues composed of several metals, espe- 
cially pamted statues. 1 Without pretending that sculpture has 
not to a certain point its color, that of perfectly pure matter, that 
especially which the hand of time impresses upon it, in spite of 
all the seductions of a contemporaneous 2 artist of great talent, I 
have little taste, I confess, for that artifice that is forced to give 
to marble the morbidezza of painting. Sculpture is an austere 
muse ; it has its graces, but they are those of no other art. 
Flesh- color must remain a stranger to it : there would nothing 
more remain to communicate to it but the movement of poetry 
and the indefiniteness of music ! And what will music gain by 
aiming at the picturesque, when its proper domain is the pa- 
thetic ? Give to the most learned symphonist a storm to render. 
Nothing is easier to imitate than the whistling of the winds and 
the noise of thunder. But by what combinations of harmony 
will he exhibit to the eyes the glare of the lightning rending all 
of a sudden the veil of the night, and what is most fearful in the 
tempest, the movement of the waves that now ascend like a 

1 Sec the Jupiter Olym/pien of M. Quatrcmerc dc Quincy. 

2 Allusion to the Magdelelne of Canova, which was then to be seen in the 
gallery of M. dc Sommariva. 



THE DIFFERENT AKTS. 171 

mountain, now descend and seem to precipitate themselves into 
bottomless abysses ? If the auditor is not informed of the sub- 
ject, he will never suspect it, and I defy him to distinguish a 
tempest from a battle. In spite of science and genius, sounds 
cannot paint forms. Music, when well guided, will guard itself 
from contending against the impossible ; it will not undertake to 
express the tumult and strife of the waves and other similar phe- 
nomena ; it will do more : with sounds it will fill the soul with 
the sentiments that succeed each other in us during the different 
scenes of the tempest. Haydn will thus become 1 the rival, even 
the vanquisher of the painter, because it has been given to music 
to move and agitate the soul more profoundly than painting. 

Since the Laocoon of Lessing, it is no longer permitted to re- 
peat, without great reserve, the famous axiom, — Ut pictura 
2ooesis ; or, at least, it is very certain that painting cannot do 
every thing that poetry can do. Everybody admires the picture 
of Rumor, drawn by Virgil ; but let a painter try to realize this 
symbolic figure ; let him represent to us a huge monster with a 
hundred eyes, a hundred mouths, and a hundred ears, whose 
feet touch the earth, whose head is lost in the clouds, and such 
a figure will become very ridiculous. 

So the arts have a common end, and entirely different means. 
Hence the general rules common to all, and particular rules for 
each. I have neither time nor space to enter into details on this 
point. I limit myself to repeating, that the great law which 
governs all others, is expression. Every work of art that does 
not express an idea signifies nothing ; in addressing itself to such 
or such a sense, it must penetrate to the mind, to the soul, and 
bear thither a thought, a sentiment capable of touching or ele- 
vating it. From this fundamental rule all the others are derived ; 
for example, that which is continually and justly recommended, 
— composition. To this is particularly applied the precept of 
unity and variety. But, in saying this, we have said nothing so 

1 See the Tempest of Haydn, among the pianoforte works of this master. 



172 LECTURE NINTH. 

long as we have not determined the nature of the unity of which 
we would speak. True unity, is unity of expression, and variety 
is made only to spread over the entire work the idea or the sin- 
gle sentiment that it should express. It is useless to remark, 
that between composition thus denned, and what is often called 
composition, as the symmetry and arrangement of parts accord- 
ing to artificial rules, there is an abyss. True composition is 
nothing else than the most powerful means of expression. 

Expression not only furnishes the general rules of art, it also 
gives the principle that allows of their classification. 

In fact, every classification supposes a principle that serves as 
a common measure. 

Such a principle has been sought in pleasure, and the first of 
arts has seemed that which gives the most vivid joys. But we 
have proved that the object of art is not pleasure : — the more or 
less of pleasure that an art procures cannot, then, be the true 
measure of its value. 

This measure is nothing else than expression. Expression 
being the supreme end, the art that most nearly approaches it is 
the first of all. 

All true arts are expressive, but they are diversely so. Take 
music ; it is without contradiction the most penetrating, the pro- 
foundest, the most intimate art. There is physically and morally 
between a sound and the soul a marvellous relation. It seems 
as though the soul were an echo in which the sound takes a new 

o 

power. Extraordinary things are recounted of the ancient mu- 
sic. And it must not be believed that the greatness of effect 
supposes here very complicated means. No, the less noise mu- 
sic makes, the more it touches. Give some notes to Pergolese, 
give him especially some pure and sweet voices, and he returns 
a celestial charm, bears you away into infinite spaces, plunges 
you into ineffable reveries. The peculiar power of music is to 
open to the imngination a limitless career, to lend itself with 
astonishing facility to all the moods of each one, to arouse or 
calm, with the sounds of the simplest melody, our accustomed 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 173 

sentiments, our favorite affections. In this respect music is an 
art without a rival : — however, it is not the first of arts. 

Music pays for the immense power that has been given it ; it 
awakens more than any other art the sentiment of the infinite, 
because it is vague, obscure, indeterminate in its effects. It is 
just the opposite art to sculpture, which bears less towards the 
infinite, because every thing in it is fixed with the last degree of 
precision. Such is the force and at the same time the feebleness 
of music, that it expresses every thing and expresses nothing in 
particular. Sculpture, on the contrary, scarcely gives rise to 
any reverie, for it clearly represents such a thing and not such 
another. Music does not paint, it touches ; it puts in motion 
imagination, not the imagination that reproduces images, but 
that which makes the heart beat, for it is absurd to limit imagi- 
nation to the domain of images. 1 The heart, once touched, 
moves all the rest of our being ; thus music, indirectly, and to a 
certain point, can recall images and ideas; but its direct and 
natural power is neither on the representative imagination nor 
intelligence, it is on the heart, and that is an advantage suffi- 
ciently beautiful. 

The domain of music is sentiment, but even there its power is 
more profound than extensive, and if it expresses certain senti- 
ments with an incomparable force, it expresses but a very small 
number of them. By way of association, it can awaken them 
all, but directly it produces very few of them, and the simplest 
and the most elementary, too, — sadness and joy with their thou- 
sand shades. Ask music to express magnanimity, virtuous reso- 
lution, and other sentiments of this kind, and it will be just as 
incapable of doing it, as of painting a lake or a mountain. It 
goes about it as it can ; it employs the slow, the rapid, the loud, 
the soft, etc., but imagination has to do the rest, and imagination 
does only what it pleases. The same measure reminds one of a 
mountain, another of the ocean ; the warrior finds in it heroic 

1 See lecture 6. 



174: LECTURE NESTTH. 

inspirations, the recluse religious inspirations. Doubtless, words 
determine musical expression, but the merit then is in the word, 
not in the music ; and sometimes the word stamps the music 
with a precision that destroys it, and deprives it of its proper 
effects — vagueness, obscurity, monotony, but also fulness and 
profundity, I was about to say infinitude. I do not in the least 
admit that famous definition of song : — a noted declamation. A 
simple declamation rightly accented is certainly preferable to 
stunning accompaniments ; but to music must be left its charac- 
ter, and its defects and advantages must not be taken away from 
it. Especially it must not be turned aside from its object, and 
there must not be demanded from it what it could not give. It 
is not made to express complicated and factitious sentiment, nor 
terrestrial and vulgar sentiments. Its peculiar charm is to ele- 
vate the soul towards the infinite. It is therefore naturally al- 
lied to religion, especially to that religion of the infinite, which is 
at the same time the religion of the heart ; it excels in transport- 
ing to the feet of eternal mercy the soul trembling on the wings 
of repentance, hope, and love. Happy are those, who, at Rome, 
in the Vatican, 1 during the solemnities of the Catholic worship, 

1 I have not myself had the good fortune to hear the religious music of 
the Vatican. Therefore, I shall let a competent judge, M. Quatremere de 
Quincy, speak, Considerations Morales sur les Destination des Ouvrages de 
VArt, Paris, 1815, p. 98 : " Let one call to mind those chants so simple and 
so touching, that terminate at Eome the funeral solemnities of those three 
days which the Church particularly devotes to the expression of its grief, in 
the last week of Lent. In that nave where the genius of Michael Angclo 
has embraced the duration of ages, from the wonders of creation to the last 
judgment that must destroy its works, are celebrated, in the presence of the 
Roman pontiff, those nocturnal ceremonies whose rites, symbols, and plain- 
tive liturgies seem to be so many figures of the mystery of grief to which 
they are consecrated. The light decreasing by degrees, at the termination 
of each psalm, you would say that a funeral veil is extended little by little 
over those religious vaults. Soon the doubtful light of the last lamp allows 
you to perceive nothing but Christ in the distance, in the midst of clouds, 
pronouncing liis judgments, and some angel executors of his behests. 
Then, at the bottom of a tribune interdicted to the regard of the profane, is 
heard the psalm of the penitent kin<r, to which three of the greatest masters 
of the art have added the modulations of a simple and pathetic chant. No 
instrument is mingled with those accents. Simple harmonies of voice exe- 



THE DIFFERENT ARTS. 170 

have heard the melodies of Leo, Durante, and Perp-olese, on th^ 
old consecrated text ! They have entered heaven for a moment, 
and their souls have been able to ascend thither without distinc- 
tion of rank, country, even belief, by those invisible and myste- 
rious steps, composed, thus to speak, of all the simple, natural, 
universal sentiments, that everywhere on earth draw from the 
bosom of the human creature a sigh towards another world ! 

Between sculpture and music, those two opposite extremes, is 
painting, nearly as precise as the one, nearly as touching as the 
other. Like sculpture, it marks the visible forms of objects, but 
adds to them life ; like music, it expresses the profoundest senti- 
ments of the soul, and expresses them all. Tell me what senti- 
ment does not come within the province of the painter ? He 
has entire nature at his disposal, the physical world, and the 
moral world, a churchyard, a landscape, a sunset, the ocean, the 
great scenes of civil and religious life, all the beings of creation, 
above all, the figure of man, and its expression, that living mir- 
ror of what passes in the soul. More pathetic than sculpture, 
clearer than music, painting is elevated, in my opinion, above 
both, because it expresses beauty more under all its forms, 
and the human soul in all the richness and variety of its senti- 
ments. 

But the art par excellence, that which surpasses all others, be- 
cause it is incomparably the most expressive, is poetry. 

Speech is the instrument of poetry ; poetry fashions it to its 
use, and idealizes it, in order to make it express ideal beauty. 



cute that music ; but these voices seem to be those of angels, and their effect 
penetrates the depths of the soul.' 7 

We have cited this beautiful passage — and we could have cited many 
others, eveu superior to it — of a man now forgotten, and almost always mis- 
understood, but whom posterity will put in his place. Let us indicate, at 
least, the last pages of the same production, on the necessity of leaving the 
works of art in the place for which they were made, for example, the por- 
trait of Mile, de Valliere in the JfaJtliine aux Garmilites^ instead of trans- 
ferring it to, and exposing it in the apartments of Versailles, " the only 
place in the world," eloquently says M. Quatremere, " which never should 
have seen it.*' 



176 LECTURE NINTH. 

Poetry gives to it the charm and power of measure ; it makes 
of it something intermediary between the ordinary voice and 
music, something at once material and immaterial, finite, clear, 
and precise, like contours and forms the most definite, living 
and animated like color, pathetic and infinite like sound. A 
word in itself, especially a word chosen and transfigured by 
poetry, is the most energetic and universal symbol. Armed 
with this talisman, poetry reflects all the images of the sensible 
world, like sculpture and painting ; it reflects sentiment like 
painting and music, with all its varieties, which music does not 
attain, and in their rapid succession that painting cannot follow, 
as precise and immobile as sculpture ; and it not only expresses 
all that, it expresses what is inaccessible to every other art, I 
mean thought, entirely distinct from the senses and even from 
sentiment, — thought that has no forms, — thought that has no 
color, that lets no sound escape, that does not manifest itself in 
any way, — thought in its highest flight, in its most refined 
abstraction. 

Think of it. What a world of images, of sentiments, of 
thoughts at once distinct and confused, are excited within us by 
this one word — country ! and by this other word, brief and im- 
mense, — God ! What is more clear and altogether more pro- 
found and vast ! 

Tell the architect, the sculptor, the painter, even the musician, 
to call forth also by a single stroke all the powers of nature and 
the soul ! They cannot, and by that they acknowledge the supe- 
riority of speech and poetry. 

They proclaim it themselves, for they take poetry for their own 
measure ; they esteem their own works, and demand that they 
should be esteemed, in proportion as they approach the poetic 
ideal. And the human race does as artists do : a beautiful pic- 
ture, a noble melody, a living and expressive statue, gives rise to 
the exclamation — How poetical ! This is not an arbitrary com- 
parison ; it is a natural judgment which makes poetry the type 
of the perfection of all the arts, — the art par excellence, which 



THE DIFFEEEXT AKT3. 177 

comprises all others, to which they aspire, which none can 
reach. 

TY*hen the other arts would imitate the works of poetry, they 
usually err, losing their own genius, without robbing poetry of its 
genius. But poetry constructs according to its own taste palaces 
and temples, like architecture ; it makes them simple or magnifi- 
cent ; all orders, as well as all systems, obey it ; the different ages 
of art are the same to it ; it reproduces, if it pleases, the classic or 
the Gothic, the beautiful or the sublime, the measured or the in- 
finite. Lessing has been able, with the exactest justice, to com- 
pare Homer to the most perfect sculptor ; with such precision are 
the forms which that marvellous chisel gives to all beings deter- 
mined"! And what a painter, too, is Homer ! and, of a different 
kind, Dante ! Music alone has something more penetrating than 
poetry, but it is vague, limited, and fugitive. Besides its clearness, 
its variety, its durability, poetry has also the most pathetic accents. 
Call to mind the words that Priam utters at the feet of Achilles 
while asking him for the dead body of his son, more than one verse 
of Virgil, entire scenes of the Cid and the Polyeucte, the prayer of 
Esther kneeling before the Lord, the choruses of Esther and Atha- 
lie. In the celebrated song of Pergolese, Stabat Mater Dolorosa, 
we may ask which moves most, the music or the words. The Dies 
irce, Dies ilia, recited only, produces the most terrible effect. In 
those fearful words, every blow tells, so to speak ; each word con- 
tains a distinct sentiment, an idea at once profound and determi- 
nate. The intellect advances at each step, and the heart rushes 
on in its turn. Human speech idealized by poetry has the depth 
ard brilliancy of musical notes ; it is luminous as well as pa- 
thetic ; it speaks to the mind as well as to the heart ; it is in that 
inimitable, unique, and embraces all extremes and all contraries 
in a harmony that redoubles their reciprocal effect, in which, by 
turns, appear and are developed, all images, all sentiments, all 
ideas, all the human faculties, all the inmost recesses of the soul, 
all the forms of things, all real and all intelligible worlds ! 

8* 



LECTUKE X. 

FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but the different 
schools of art. Example : — French art in the seventeenth century. French 
poetry: — Corneille. Eacine. Moliere. La Fontaine. Boileau. — Paint- 
ing: — Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain. Champagne. — Engraving. — • 
Sculpture : — Sarrazin. The Anguiers. Girardon. Pujet. — Le Notre. — 
Architecture. 

We believe that we have firmly established that all kinds of 
beauty, although most dissimilar in appearance, may, when sub- 
jected to a serious examination, be reduced to spiritual and moral 
beauty ; that expression, therefore, is at once the true object and 
the first law of art ; that all arts are such only so far as they ex- 
press the idea concealed under the form, and are addressed to the 
soul through the senses ; finally, that in expression the different 
arts find the true measure of their relative value, and the most 
expressive art must be placed in the first rank. 

If expression judges the different arts, does it not naturally fol- 
low, that by the same title it can also judge the different schools 
which, in each art, dispute with each other the empire of taste ? 

There is not one of these schools that does not represent in its 
own way some side of the beautiful, and we are disposed to em- 
brace all in an impartial and kindly study. We are eclectics in 
the arts as well as in metaphysics. But, as in metaphysics, the 
knowledge of all systems, and the portion of truth that is in each, 
enlightens without enfeebling our convictions ; so, in the history 
of arts, while holding the opinion that no school must be dis- 
dained, that even in China some shade of beauty can be found, 
our eclecticism does not make us waver in regard to the sentiment 
of true beauty and the supreme rule of art. What we demand 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 179 

of the different schools, without distinction of time or place, what 
we see in the south as well as in the north, at Florence, Rome, 
Venice, and Seville, as well as at Antwerp, Amsterdam, and 
Paris, — wherever there are men, is something human, is the ex- 
pression of a sentiment or an idea. 

A criticism that should be founded on the principle of expres- 
sion, would somewhat derange, it must be confessed, received 
judgments, and would carry some disorder into the hierarchy of 
the renowned. We do not undertake such a revolution ; we 
only propose to confirm, or at least elucidate our principle by an 
example, and by an example that is at our hand. 

There is in the world a school formerly illustrious, now very 
lightly treated : — this school is the French school of the seven- 
teenth century. We would replace it in honor, by recalling 
attention to the qualities that make its glory. 

We have worked with constancy to reinstate among us the 
philosophy of Descartes, unworthily sacrificed to the philosophy 
of Locke, because with its defects it possesses in our view the 
incomparable merit of subordinating the senses to the mind, of 
elevating and ennobling man. So we profess a serious and re- 
flective admiration for our national art of the seventeenth century, 
because, without disguising what is wanting to it, we find in it 
what we prefer to every thing else, grandeur united to good sense 
and' reason, simplicity and force, genius of composition, especially 
that of expression. 

France, careless of her glory, does not appear to have the least 
notion that she reckons in her annals perhaps the greatest century 
of humanity, that which embraces the greatest number of extra- 
ordinary men of every kind. When, I pray you, have politicians 
like Henry IV., Richelieu, Mazarin, Colbert, Louis XIV. been seen 
giving each other the hand ? I do not pretend that each of them 
has no rival, even superiors. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, 
perhaps excel them. But Alexander has but a single contempo- 
rary that can be compared with him, his father Philip; Caesar 
cannot even have suspected that Octavius would one day be 



180 LECTUKE TENTH. 

worthy of him ; Charlemagne is a colossus in a desert ; whilst 
among us these five men succeed each other without an interval, 
press upon each other, and have, thus to speak, a single soul. 
And by what officers were they served ! Is Conde really inferior 
to Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar; for among his predecessors 
we must not look for other rivals ? Who among them surpasses 
him in the extent and justness of his conceptions, in quickness of 
sight, in rapidity of manoeuvres, in the union of impetuosity and 
firmness, in the double glory of taker of cities and gainer of bat- 
tles ? Add that he dealt with generals like Merci and William, 
that he had under him Turenne and Luxemburg, without speak- 
ing of so many other soldiers who were reared in that admirable 
school, and at the hour of reverse still sufficed to save France. 

What other time, at least among the moderns, has seen flour- 
ishing together so many poets of the first order ? We have, it is 
true, neither Homer, nor Dante, nor Milton, nor even Tasso. 
The epic, with its primitive simplicity, is interdicted us. But in 
the drama we scarcely have equals. It is because dramatic poet- 
ry is the poetry that is adapted to us, moral poetry 'par excellence, 
which represents man with his different passions armed against 
each other, the violent contentions between virtue and crime, the 
freaks of fortune, the lessons of providence, and in a narrow 
compass, too, in which the events press upon each other with- 
out confusion, in which the action rapidly progresses towards the 
crisis that must reveal what is most intimate to the heart of the 
personages. 

Let us dare to say what we think, that, in our opinion, iEschy- 
lus, Sophocles, and Euripides, together, do not equal Corneille ; 
for none of them has known and expressed like him what is of 
all things most truly touching, a great soul at war with itself, 
between a generous passion and duty. Corneille is the creator 
of a new pathetic unknown to antiquity and to all the moderns 
before him. He disdains to address common and subaltern pas- 
sions ; he does not seek to rouse terror and pity, as demands 
Aristotle, who limits himself to erecting into maxims the practice 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 181 

of the Greeks. Corneille seems to have read Plato, and followed 
his precepts : — he addresses a most elevated part of human nature, 
the noblest passion, the one nearest virtue, — admiration ; and 
from admiration carried to its culmination he draws the most 
powerful effects. Shakspeare, we admit, is superior to Corneille 
in extent and richness of dramatic genius. Entire human nature 
seems at his disposal, and he reproduces the different scenes of 
life in their beauty and deformity, in their grandeur and baseness. 
He excels in painting the terrible or the gentle passions. Othello 
is jealousy, Lady Macbeth is ambition, as Juliet and Desdemona 
are the immortal names of youthful and unfortunate love. But 
if Corneille has less imagination, he has more soul. Less varied, 
he is more profound. If he does not put upon the stage so many 
different characters, those that he does put on it are the greatest 
that can be offered to humanity. The scenes that he gives are 
less heart-rending, but at once more delicate and more sublime. 
What is the melancholy of Hamlet, the grief of King Lear, even 
the disdainful intrepidity of Caesar, in comparison with the mag- 
nanimity of Augustus striving to be master of himself as well as 
the universe, in comparison with Chimene sacrificing love to 
honor, especially in comparison with Pauline, not suffering even 
at the bottom of her heart an involuntary sigh for the one that 
she must not love ? Corneille always confines himself to the 
highest regions. He is by turns Roman and Christian. He is 
the interpreter of heroes, the chanter of virtue, the poet of 
warriors and politicians. 1 And it must not be forgotten that 
Shakspeare is almost alone in his times, whilst after Corneille 
comes Racine, who would suffice for the poetical glory of a nation. 
Racine assuredly cannot be compared with Corneille for dramatic 
genius ; he is more the man of letters ; he has not the tragic soul ; 
he neither loves nor understands politics and war. When he 
imitates Corneille, for example, in Alexander, and even in Mith- 



1 One is reminded of the expression of the great Conde" : " Where then 

lias Corneille learned politics and war ?" 



182 LECTURE TENTH. 

ridates, he imitates him badly enough. The scene, so vaunted, 
of Mithridates exposing his plan of campaign to his sons is a 
morsel of the finest rhetoric, which cannot be compared with the 
political and military scenes of Cinna and Sertorius, especially 
with that first scene of the Death of Pompey, in which you wit- 
ness a counsel as true, as grand, as profound as ever could have 
been one of the counsels of Richelieu or Mazarin. Racine was 
not born to paint heroes, but he paints admirably man with his 
natural passions, and the most natural as well as the most touch- 
ing of all, love. So he particularly excels in feminine characters. 
For men he has need of being sustained by Tacitus or holy Scrip- 
ture. 1 With woman he is at his ease, and he makes them think 
and speak with perfect truth, set off by exquiste art. Demand of 
him neither Emilie, Cornelie, nor Pauline; but listen to Andro- 
maque, Monime, Berenice, and Phedre ! There, even in imita- 
ting, he is original, and leaves the ancients very far behind him. 
Who has taught him that charming delivery, those graceful 
troubles, that purity even in feebleness, that melancholy, some- 
times even that depth, with that marvellous language which 
seems the natural accent of woman's heart ? It is continually 
repeated that Racine wrote better than Corneille : — say only that 
the two wrote very differently, and like men in very different epochs. 
One has two sovereign qualities, which belong to his own nature 



1 It would be a curious and useful study, to compare with the original all 
the passages of Britannicus imitated from Tacitus ; in them Racine would 
almost always be found below his model. I will give a single example. In 
the account of the death of Britannicus, Racine thus expresses the different 
effects of the crime on the spectators : 

Juez combien ce coup frappe tons les esprits ; 
La moitie" B'^pouvante et sort avec des cris ; 
Mais ceux qui dc la cour ont un plus long usage 
Sur les yeux do Cesar composcnt leur visage. 

Certainly the style is excellent; but it pales and seems nothing more than 
a very feeble sketch in comparison with the rapid and sombre pencil-strokes 
of the great Roman painter : " Trepidatur a circumsedentibus, diff ugiunt 
imprudentes; at, quibus altior intelleotus, resistant defixi ot Neronem in- 
tuentes." 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 183 

and his times, a naivete and grandeur, the other is not naive, but 
he has too much taste not to be always simple, and he supplies 
the place of grandeur, forever lost, with consummate elegance. 
Corneille speaks the language of statesmen, soldiers, theologians, 
philosophers, and clever women ; of Richelieu, Rohan, Saint-Cyran, 
Descartes, and Pascal ; of mother Angelique Arnaud and mother 
Madeleine de Saint-Joseph ; the language which Moliere still 
spoke, which Bossuet preserved to his last breath. Racine speaks 
that of Louis XIV. and the women who were the ornament of 
his court. I suppose that thus spoke Madame, the amiable, 
sprightly, and unfortunate Henriette ; thus wrote the author of 
the Princesse de Cleves and the author of Telemaque. Or, rather, 
this lano'uao'e is that of Racine himself, of that feeble and tender 
soul, which passed quickly from love to devotion, which uttered 
its complaints in lyric poetry, which was wholly poured out in the 
choruses of Esther and Athalie, and in the Cantiques Spirituels ; 
that soul, so easy to be moved, that a religious ceremony or a 
representation of Esther at Saint-Cyr touched to tears, that pitied 
the misfortunes of the people, that found in its pity and its char- 
ity the courage to speak one day the truth to Louis XIV., and 
was extinguished by the first breath of disgrace. 

Moliere is, in comparison with Aristophanes, what Corneille is, 
in comparison with Shakspeare. The author of Plutus, the 
Wasps, and the Clouds, has doubtless an imagination, an explo- 
sive buffoonery, a creative power, above all comparison. Moliere 
has not as great poetical conceptions : he has more, perhaps ; he 
has characters. His coloring is less brilliant, his graver is more 
penetrating. He has engraved in the memory of men a certain 
number of irregularities and vices which will ever be called 
VAvare (the Miser), le Malade Imaginaire (the Hyp)ochondriac), 
les Femmes Savantes (the Learned Women), le Tartufe (the 
Hypocrite), and Don Juan, not to speak of the Misanthrope, a 
piece apart, touching as pleasant, which is not addressed to the 
crowd, and cannot be popular, because it expresses a ridicule rare 
enough, excess in the passion of truth and honor. 



184: LECTURE TENTH. 

Of all fabulists, ancient and modern, does any one, even the 
ingenious, the pure, the elegant Phsedrus, approach our La Fon- 
taine? He composes his personages, and puts them in action 
with the skill of Moliere ; he knows how to take on occasion the 
tone of Horace, and mingle an ode with a fable ; he is at once 
the most naive, and the most refined of writers, and his art dis- 
appears in its very perfection. We do not speak of the tales, 
first, because we condemn the kind, then, because La Fontaine 
displays in them qualities more Italian than French, a narrative 
full of nature, malice, and grace, but without any of those pro- 
found, tender, melancholy traits, that place among the greatest 
poets of all time the author of the Two Pigeons (Deux Pigeons), 
the Old Man (Vieillard), and the Three Young Persons 
(Gens). 

We do not hesitate to put Boileau among these great men. 
He comes after them, it is true, but he belongs to their company : 
he comprehends them, loves them, sustains them. It was he, 
who, in 1663, after the School of Women (VEcole des Femmes) 
and long before the Hypocrite (le Tartufe), and the Misanthrope, 
proclaimed Moliere the master in the art of verse. It was he 
who, in 1677, after the failure of Phedre, defended the van- 
quisher of Euripides against the successes of Pradon. It was 
he who, in advance of posterity, first put in light what is new 
and entirely original in the plays of Corneille. 1 He saved the 
pension of the old tragedian by offering the sacrifice of his own. 
Louis XIV. asking him what writer most honored his reign, Boi- 
leau answered, that it was Moliere ; and when the great king in 
his decline persecuted Port-Royal, and wished to lay hands on 
Arnaud, he encountered a man of letters, who said to the face of 
the imperious monarh, — " Your Majesty in vain seeks M. Arnaud, 
you are too fortunate to find him." Boileau is somewhat wanting 
in imagination and invention ; but he is great in the energetic 
sentiment of truth and justice ; he carries to the extent of passion 

1 See the letter to Perrault. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 185 

taste for the beautiful and the honest ; he is a poet by force of 
soul and good sense. More than once his heart dictated to him 
the most pathetic verses : 

" In vain against the Cid a minister is leagued, 1 
All Paris for Chimene has the eyes of Eodrique," etc. 



" After a little spot of earth, obtained by prayer, 
Forever in the tomb had inclosed Moliere," etc. 

And this epitaph of Arnaud, so simple and so grand : 2 

" At the feet of this altar of structure gross, 
Lies without pomp, inclosed in a coffin vile, 
The most learned mortal that ever wrote ; 
Arnaud, who in grace instructed by Jesus Christ, 
Combating for the Church, has, in the Church itself, 
Suffered more than one outrage and more than one anathema," etc. 

" Wandering, poor, banished, proscribed, persecuted ; 
And even by his death their ill-extinguished rage 
Had never left his ashes in repose, 
If God himself here by his holy flock 
From these devouring wolves had not concealed his bones." 3 

These are, I think, poets sufficiently great, and we have more 
of them still : I mean those charming or sublime minds who 



1 En vain contre le Cid ministre se ligue, 

Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Eodrique, etc. 

Apres qu'un peu de terre, obtenu par priere, 

Pour jamais dans la tombe eut enferme Moliere, etc. 

2 Aux pieds de cet autel de structure grossiere, 
Git sans pompe, enferme dans une vile biere, 
Le plus savant mortel qui jamais ait ecrit ; 
Arnaud, qui sur la grace instruit par Jesus-Christ, 
Combattant pour l'Eglise, a, dans l'Eglise meme, 
Souffert plus d'un outrage et plus d'un anatheme, etc. 

Errant, pauvre, banni, proscrit, persecute ; 
Et meme par sa mort leur fureur mal eteinte 
N'aurait jamais laisse ses cendres en repos, 
Si Dieu lui-meme ici de son ouaille sainte 
A ces loups devorants n'avait cache les os. 
3 These verses did not appear till after the death of Boileau, and they are 



186 LECTURE TENTH. 

have elevated prose to poetry. Greece alone, in her most beauti- 
ful days, offers, perhaps, such a variety of admirable prose writers. 
Who can enumerate them ? At first, Rabelais and Montaigne ; 
later, Descartes, Pascal, and Malebranche ; La Rochefoucauld and 
La Bruyere ; Retz and Saint-Simon ; Bourdaloue, Flechier, 
Fenelon, and Bossuet ; add to these so many eminent women, at 
their head Madame de Sevigne ; while Montesquieu, Voltaire, 
Rousseau, and Buffon are still to come. 1 

By what strange diversity could a country, in which the mental 



not well known. Jean-Baptiste Kousseau, in a letter to Brossette, rightly 
said that these are "the most beautiful verses that M. Despreaux ever 
made." 

1 4th Series of our works, Literature, book i., Preface, p. 3 : "It is in 
prose, perhaps, that our literary glory is most certain. . . . What modern 
nation reckons prose writers that approach those of our nation ? The coun- 
try of Shakspeare and Milton does not possess, since Bacon, a single prose 
writer of the first order [?] ; that of Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, is 
in vain proud of Machiavel, whose sound and manly diction, like the thought 
that it expresses, is destitute of grandeur. Spain, it is true, has produced 
Cervantes, an admirable writer, but he is alone. . . . France can easily 
show a list of more than twenty prose writers of genius : Froissard, Eabelais, 
Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Moliere, Eetz, La Bruyere, 
Malebranche, Bossuet, Fenelon, Flechier, Bourdaloue, Massillon, Mme. de 
Sevigne, Saint-Simon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, J. J. Eousseau; with- 
out speaking of so many more that would be in the first rank everywhere 
else, — Amiot, Calvin, Pasquier, D'Aubigne, Charron, Balzac, Vaugelas, Pe- 
lisson, Nicole, Fleury, Bussi, Saint-Evremont, Mme. de Lafayette, Mme de 
Maintenon, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Hamilton, Le Sage, Prevost, Beau- 
marchais, etc. It may be said with the exactest truth, that French prose is 
without a rival in modern Europe ; and, even in antiquity, superior to the 
Latin prose, at least in the quantity and variety of models, it has no equal 
but the Greek prose, in its palmiest days, in the days of Herodotus and De- 
mosthenes. 1 do not prefer Demosthenes to Pascal, and it would be difficult 
for me to put Plato himself above Bossuet. Plato and Bossuet, in my 
opinion, are the two greatest masters of human language, with manifest dif- 
ferences, as well as more than one trait of resemblance; both ordinarily 
speak like the people, Avith the last degree of simplicity, and at moments 
ascending without effort to a poetry as magnificent as that of Homer, ingeni- 
ous and polished to the most charming delicacy, and by instinct majestic 
and sublime. Plato, without doubt, has incomparable graces, the supreme 
serenity, and, as it were, the demi-smile of the divine sage. Bossuet, on 
his side, has the pathetic, in which he has no rival but the great Corneille. 
When such writers are possessed, is it not a religion to render them the 
honor that is their due, that of a regular and profound study?" 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 187 

arts were carried to such perfection, remain ordinary in the other 
arts ? Was the sentiment of the beautiful wanting, then, to that 
society so polished, to that magnificent court, to those great lords 
and those great ladies passionately loving luxury and elegance, 
to that public of the elite, enamored of every kind of glory, whose 
enthusiasm defended the Cid against Kichelieu ? No ; France 
in the seventeenth century was a whole, and produced artists that 
she can place by the side of her poets, her philosophers, her 
orators. 

But, in order to admire our artists, it is necessary to compre- 
hend them. 

We do not believe that imagination has been less freely im- 
parted to France than to any other nation of Europe. It has 
even had its reign among us. It is fancy that rules in the six- 
teenth century, and inspires the literature and the arts of the 
Renaissance. But a great revolution intervened at the commence- 
ment of the seventeenth century. France at that moment seems 
to pass from youth to virility. Instead of abandoning imagina- 
tion to itself, we apply ourselves from that moment to restrain it 
without destroying it, to moderate it, as the Greeks did by the 
aid of taste ; as in the progress of life and society we learn to re- 
press or conceal what is too individual in character. An end is 
made of the literature of the preceding age. A new poetry, a 
new prose, begin to appear, which, during an entire century, bear 
fruits sufficiently beautiful. Art follows the general movement; 
after having been elegant and graceful, it becomes in its turn 
serious ; it no longer aims at originality and extraordinary effects ; 
it neither flashes nor dazzles ; it speaks, above all, to the mind 
and the soul. Hence its good qualities and also its defects. In 
general, it is somewhat wanting in brilliancy and coloring, but it 
is in the highest degree expressive. 

Some time since we have changed all that. We have discov- 
ered, somewhat late, that we have not sufficient imagination ; we 
are in training to acquire it, it is true, at the expense of reason, 
alas! also at the expense of soul, which is forgotten, repudiated, 



188 LECTURE TENTH. 

proscribed. At this moment, color and form are the order of the 
day, in poetry, in painting, in every thing. We are beginning to 
run mad with Spanish painting. The Flemish and Venetian 
schools are gaining ground on the schools of Florence and Rome. 
Rossini equals Mozart, and Gluck will soon seem to us insipid. • 

Young artists, who, rightly disgusted with the dry and inani- 
mate manner of David, undertake to renovate French painting, 
who would rob the sun of its heat and splendor, remember that 
of all beings in the w 7 orld, the greatest is still man, and that what 
is greatest in man is his intelligence, and above all, his heart ; 
that it is this heart, then, which you must put and develop on 
your canvas. This is the most elevated object of art. In order 
to reach it, do not make yourselves disciples of Flemings, Vene- 
tians, and Spaniards ; return, return to the masters of our great 
national school of the seventeenth century. 

We bow with respectful admiration before the schools of Rome 
and Florence, at once ideal and living ; but, those excepted, we 
maintain that the French school equals or surpasses all others. 
We prefer neither Murillo, Rubens, Corregio, nor Titian himself 
to Lesueur and Poussin, because, if the former have an incompara- 
ble hand and color, our two countrymen are much greater in 
thought and expression. 

What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur ! l He was 
born at Paris about 1617, and he never went out of it. Poor 
and humble, he passed his life in the churches and convents 
where he worked. The only sweetness of his sad days, his only 
consolation was his wife : he loses her, and goes to die, at thirty- 
eight, in that cloister of Chartreux, which his pencil has immor- 
talized. What resemblance at once, and what difference between 
his life and that of Raphael, who also died young, but in the 
midst of pleasures, in honors, and already almost in purple ! Our 
Raphael was not the lover of Fornarina and the favorite of a 
pope : he was Christian ; he is Christianity in art. 

1 See the Appendix, at the end of the volume. 



FRENCH ART IN" THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 180 

Lesueur is a genius wholly French. Scarcely having escaped 
from the hands of Simon Youe't, he formed himself according to 
the model which he had in the soul. He never saw the sky of 
Italy. He knew some fragments of the antique, some pictures 
of Raphael, and the designs that Poussin sent him. With these 
feeble resources, and guided by a happy instinct, in less than ten 
years he mounted by a continual progress to the perfection of his 
talent, and expired at the moment when, finally sure of himself, 
he was about to produce new and more admirable master-pieces. 
Follow him from the St. Bruno completed in 1648, through the 
St. Paul of 1649, to the Vision of St. Benedict in 1651, and to 
the Muses, scarcely finished before his death. Lesueur went on 
adding to his essential qualities which he owed to his own genius, 
and to the national genius, I mean composition and expression, 
qualities which he had dreamed of, or had caught glimpses of. 
His design from day to day became more pure, without ever 
being that of the Florentine school, and the same is true of his 
coloring. 

In Lesueur every thing is directed towards expression, every 
thing is in the service of the mind, every thing is idea and senti- 
ment. There is no affectation, no mannerism ; there is a perfect 
naivete ; his figures sometimes would seem even a little com- 
mon, so natural are they, if a Divine breath did not animate 
them. It must not be forgotten that his favorite subjects do not 
exact a brilliant coloring : he oftenest retraces scenes mournful 
or austere. But as in Christianity by the side of suffering and 
resignation is faith with hope, so Lesueur joins to the pathetic 
sweetness and grace; and this man charms me at the same time 
that he moves me. 

The works of Lesueur are almost always great wholes that 
demanded profound meditation, and the most flexible talent, in 
order to preserve in them unity of subject, and to give them va- 
riety and harmony. The History of St. Bruno, the founder of 
the order des Ckartreux, is a vast melancholy poem, in which 
are represented the different scenes of monastic life. The His- 



190 LECTURE TENTH. 

tory of St. Martin and St. Benedict has not come down to us 
entire ; but the two fragments of it that we possess, the Mass of 
St. Martin, and the Vision of St. Benedict, allow us to compare 
that great work with every better thing of the kind that has 
been done in Italy, as, to speak sincerely, the Muses and the His- 
tory of Love, appear to us to equal at least the Farnesina. 

In the History of St. Bruno, it is particularly necessary to re- 
mark St. Bruno, prostrated before a crucifix, the saint reading a 
letter of the pope, his death, his apotheosis. Is it possible to 
carry meditation, humiliation, rapture farther ? St. Paul peach- 
ing at Ephesus reminds one of the School of Athens, by the ex- 
tent of the scene, the employment of architecture, and the skilful 
distribution of groups. In spite of the number of personages, 
and the diversity of episodes, the picture wholly centres in St. 
Paul. He preaches, and upon his words hang those who are 
listening, of every sex, of every age, in the most varied attitudes. 
In that we behold the grand lines of the Roman school, its de- 
sign full of nobleness and truth at the same time. What charm- 
ing and grave heads ! What graceful, bold, and always natural 
movements ! Here, that child with ringlets, full of naive enthu- 
siasm ; there, that old man with bended knees, and hands joined. 
Are not all those beautiful heads, and those draperies, too, worthy 
of Raphael ? But the marvel of the picture is the figure of St. 
Paul, 1 — it is that of the Olympic Jupiter, animated by a new 
spirit. The Mass of St. Martin carries into the soul an impres- 
sion of peace and silence. The Vision of St. Benedict has the 
character of simplicity full of grandeur. A desert, the saint on 
his knees, contemplating his sister, St. Scholastique, who is as- 
cending to heaven, borne up by angels, accompanied by two 
young girls, crowned with flowers, and bearing the palm, the sym- 
bol of virginity. St. Peter and St. Paul show St. Benedict the 
abode whither his sister is going to enjoy eternal peace. A 
slight ray of the sun pierces the cloud. St. Benedict is as it were 

1 See the Appendix. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 191 

lifted up from the earth by this ecstatic vision. One scarcely de- 
sires a more lively color, and the expression is divine. Those two 
virgins, a little too tall, perhaps, how beautiful and pure they are ! 
How sweet are those forms ! How grave and gentle are those 
faces ! The person of the holy monk, with all the material ac- 
cessories, is perfectly natural, for it remains on the earth ; whilst 
his face, where his soul shines forth, is wholly ideal, and already 
in heaven. 

But the chef-d'oeuvre of Lesueur is, in our opinion, the Descent 
from the Cross, or rather the enshrouding of Jesus Christ, already 
descended from the cross, whom Joseph of Arimathea, Nicode- 
mus, and St. John are placing in the shroud. On the left, Mag- 
dalen, in tears, kisses the feet of Jesus ; on the right, are the holy 
women and the Virgin. It is impossible to carry the pathetic 
farther and preserve beauty. The holy women, placed in front, 
have each their particular grief. While one of them abandons 
herself to despair, an immense but internal and thoughtful sad- 
ness is upon the face of the mother of the crucified. She has 
comprehended the divine benefit of the redemption of the human 
race, and her grief, sustained by this thought, is calm and re- 
signed. And then what dignity in that head ! It, in some 
sort, sums up the whole picture, and gives to it its character, 
that of a profound and subdued emotion. I have seen many 
Descents from the Cross ; I have seen that of Rubens at Ant- 
werp, in which the sanctity of the subject has, as it were, con- 
strained the great Flemish painter to join sensibility and senti- 
ment to color ; none of those pictures have touched me like that 
of Lesueur. All the parts of art are there in the service of ex- 
pression. The drawing is severe and strong ; even the color, 
without being brilliant, surpasses that of the St. Bruno, the 
Mass of St. Martin, the St. Paul, and even that of the Vision 
of St. Benedict ; as if Lesueur had wished to bring together in 
it all the powers of his soul, all the resources of his talent I 1 

1 This picture had been made for a chapel of the church of St. Gervais. 



192 LECTURE TENTH. 

Now, regard the Muses, — other scenes, other beauties, the 
same genius. Those are Pagan pictures, but Christianity is in 
them also, by reason of the adorable chastity with which Le- 
sueur has clothed them. All critics have emulously shown the 
mythological errors into which poor Lesueur fell, and they have 
not wanted occasion to deplore that he had not made the jour- 
ney to Italy and studied antiquity more. But who can have the 
strange idea of searching in Lesueur for an archeology ? I seek 
and find in him the very genius of painting. Is not that Terp- 
sichore, well or ill named, with a harp a little too strong, it is 
said, as if the Muse had no particular gift, in her modest atti- 
tude the symbol of becoming grace ? In that group of three 
Muses, to which one may give what name he pleases, is not the 
one that holds upon her knees a book of music, who sings or is 
about to sing, the most ravishing creature, a St. Cecilia that 
preludes just before abandoning herself to the intoxication of in- 
spiration ? And in those pictures there is brilliancy and color- 
ing ; the landscape is beautifully lighted, as if Poussin had 
guided the hand of his friend. 

Poussin ! What a name I pronounce. If Lesv.eur is the 
painter of sentiment, Poussin is the painter of thought. He is 
in some sort the philosopher of painting. His pictures are reli- 
gious or moral lectures that testify a great mind as well as a 
great heart. It is sufficient to recall the Seven Sacraments, the 
Deluge, the Arcadia, the Truth that Time frees from the Taints 
of Envy, the Will of Eudamidas, and the Dance of Human 
Life. And the style is equal to the conception. Poussin draws 
like a Florentine, composes like a Frenchman, and often equals 
Lesueur in expression ; coloring alone is sometimes wanting to 
him. As well as Racine, he is smitten with the antique beauty, 
and imitates it; but, like Racine, he always remains original. 
In place of the naivete and unique charm of Lesueur, he has a 



It formed the altar-piece, and in the foreground there was the admirable 
Bearing of the Cross, which is still seen in the Museum. 



FEEXCH ART IX TKE SETE2TTEESTH CKHTUBT. 193 

rlicirr. with a correctness that never abandons him. 
Remember, too, that he cultivated every kind of painting. He 
is at once a great historical painter and a great landscape paint- 
er, — he treats religions subjects as well as profane subjects, and 
by turns is inspired by antiquity and the Bible. He lived much 
at Rome, it is true, and died there ; but he also worked in 
France, and almost always for France. Scarcely had he become 
known, when Richelieu attracted him to Paris and retained him 
there, loading him with honors, and giving him the commission 
of first painter in ordinary to the king, with the general direction 
of all the works of painting, and all the ornaments of the roval 
houses. During that sojourn of two years in Paris, he made 
the Last SupjM . :"_r St. Francois Xetvier, the Truth 

that I - .: - ':.-". 7. Is of E ... It was also to France, 
to his friend M. de Chantelou, that from Rome he addressed the 
ration of St. Paul, as well as the second series of the 
f Sacraments, an immense composition that, for grandeur 

of thought, can vie with the Stanze of Raphael. I speak of it 
from the engravings; for the Sem Sacraments are no longer in 
France. Eternal shame of the eighteenth century ! It was at 
I [ wrest from the Greeks the pediments of the 
Parthenon, — we, we delivered up to strangers, we sold all those 
monuments of French genius which Richelieu and Mazarin, with 
religious care, had collected. Public indignation did not avert 
the act ! And there has not since been found in France a king, 
a i ::::r:_::.n, to interdict letting the master-pieces of art that 
honor the nation depart without authorization from the national 
territory '} There has not been found a government which has 
undertaken at least to repurchase those that we have lost, to 
get back again the great works of Poussin, Lesueur, and so many 
others, scj ttered in Europe, instead of squandering millions to 



1 Such a law was the first act of the first assembly of affranchise i Greece, 
and all the friends of art have applauded it from end to end of civilized 
Europe. 

9 



194 LECTURE TENTH. 

acquire the baboons of Holland, as Louis XIV. said, or Spanish 
canvasses, in truth of an admirable color, but without nobleness 
and moral expression. 1 I know and I love the Dutch pastorals 
and the cows of Potter ; I am not insensible to the sombre and 
ardent coloring of Zurbaran, to the brilliant Italian imitations of 
Murillo and Velasquez ; but in fine, what is all that in compari- 
son with serious and powerful compositions like the Seven Sacra- 
ments, for example, that profound representation of Christian 
rites, a work of the highest faculties of the intellect and the soul, 
in which the intellect and the soul will ever find an exhaustless 
subject of study and meditation ! Thank God, the graver of 
Pesne has saved them from our ingratitude and barbarity. 
Whilst the originals decorate the gallery of a great English lord, 2 
the love and the talent of a Pesne, of a Stella, have preserved 
for us faithful copies in those expressive engravings that one 
never grows tired of contemplating, that every time we examine 
them, reveal to us some new side of the genius of our great 
countryman. Regard especially the Extreme Unction ! What 
a sublime and at the same time almost graceful scene ! One 
would call it an antique bas-relief, so many groups are properly 
distributed in it, with natural and varied attitudes. The drape- 
ries are as admirable as those of a fragment of the Panathencea, 
which is in the Louvre. The figures are all beautiful. Beauty 
of figures belongs to sculpture, one is about to say : — yes, but it 
also belongs to painting, if you have yourself the eye of the 
painter, if you have been struck with the expression of those 
postures, those heads, those gestures, and almost those looks ; 
for every thing lives, every thing breathes, even in those engra- 
vings, and if it were the place, we would endeavor to make the 
reader penetrate with us into those secrets of Christian sentiment 
which are also the secrets of art. 



1 See the Appendix. 

3 The Seven, Sacraments of Poussin are now in the Bridgewater Gallery- 
See the Appendix. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 195 

We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the Seven 
Sacraments, and for not having known how to keep from Eng- 
land and Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried 
in foreign collections, 1 by going to see at the Louvre what re- 
mains to us of the great French artist, — thirty pictures produced 
at different epochs of his life, which, for the most part, worthily 
sustain his renown, — the portrait of Poussin, one of the Baccha- 
nals made for Richelieu, Mars and Venus, the Death of Adonis, 
the Rape of the Sabines? Eliezer and Rebecca, Moses saved from 
the Waters, the Infant Jesus on the Knees of the Virgin and St. 
Joseph standing by, 3 especially the Manna in the Desert, the 
Judgment of Solomon, the Blind Men of Jericho, the Woman 
taken in Adultery, the Inspiration of St. Paul, the Diogenes, 
the Deluge, the Arcadia. Time has turned the color, which 
was never very brilliant ; but it has not been able to disturb 
what will make them live forever, — the design, the composition, 
and the expression. The Deluge has remained, and in fact will 
always be, the most striking. After so many masters who have 
treated the same subject, Poussin has found the secret of being 
original, and more pathetic than his predecessors, in representing 
the solemn moment when the race is about to disappear. There 
are few details ; some dead bodies are floating upon the abyss ; 
a sinister-looking moon has scarcely risen ; a few moments and 
mankind will be no more ; the last mother uselessly extends her 
last child to the last father, who cannot take it, and the serpent 
that has destroyed mankind darts forth triumphant. We try in 
vain to find in the Deluge some signs of a trembling hand : the 



1 See the Appendix. 

2 In the midst of this scene of "brutal violence, everybody has remai-ked 
this delicate trait — a Eoman quite young, almost juvenile, while possessing 
himself by force of a young girl taking refuge in the arms of her mother, 
asks her from her mother with an air at once passionate and restrained. In 
order to appreciate this picture, compare it with that of David in the ensemble 
and in the details. 

8 In fact, the St. Joseph is here the important personage. He governs the 
whole scene ; he prays, he is as it were in ecstasy. 



196 LECTURE TENTH. 

soul that sustained and conducted that hand makes itself felt by 
our soul, and profoundly moves it. Stop at that scene of 
mourning, and almost by its side let your eyes rest upon that 
fresh landscape and upon those shepherds that surround a tomb. 
The most aged, with a knee on the ground, reads these words 
graven upon the stone : Et in Arcadia ego, and I also lived in 
Arcadia. At the left a shepherd listens with serious attention. 
At the right is a charming group, composed of a shepherd in 
the spring-time of life, and a young girl of ravishing beauty. An 
artless admiration is painted on the face of the young peasant, 
who looks with happiness on his beautiful companion. As for 
her, her adorable face is not even veiled with the slightest shade ; 
she smiles, her hand resting carelessly upon the shoulder of the 
young man, and she has no appearance of comprehending that 
lecture given to beauty, youth, and love. I confess that, for 
this picture alone, of so touching a philosophy, I would give 
many master-pieces of coloring, all the pastorals of Potter, all 
the badinages of Ostade, all the buffooneries of Teniers. 

Lesueur and Poussin, by very different but nearly equal titles, 
are at the head of our great painting of the seventeenth century. 
After them, what artists again are Claude Lorrain and Philippe 
de Champagne ? 

Do you know in Italy or Holland a greater landscape painter 
than Claude ? And seize well his true character. Look at those 
vast and beautiful solitudes, lighted by the first or last rays of 
the sun, and tell me whether those solitudes, those trees, those 
waters, those mountains, that light, that silence, — whether all 
that nature has a soul, and whether those luminous and pure 
horizons do not lift you involuntarily, in ineffable reveries, to the 
invisible source of beauty and grace ! Lorrain is, above all, the 
painter of light, and his works might be called the history 
of light and all its combinations, in small and great, when 
it is poured out over large plains or breaks in the most varied 
accidents, on land, on waters, in the heavens, in its eternal source. 
The human scenes thrown into one corner have no other object 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 197 

than to relieve and make appear to advantage the scenes of 
nature by harmony or contrast. In the Village Fete, life, noise, 
movement are in front, — peace and grandeur are at the founda- 
tion of the landscape, and that is truly the picture. The same 
effect is in the Cattle Crossing a River. The landscape placed 
immediately under your eyes has nothing in it very rare, we can 
find such a one anywhere ; but follow the perspective, — it leads 
you across flowering fields, a beautiful river, ruins, mountains 
that overlook these ruins, and you lose yourself in infinite distan- 
ces. That Landscape crossed by a river, where a peasant waters 
his herd, means nothing great at first sight. Contemplate it some 
time, and peace, a sort of meditativeness in nature, a well-gradua- 
ted perspective, will, little by little, gain your heart, and give you 
in that small picture a penetrating charm. The picture called a 
Landscape represents a vast champagne filled with trees, and 
lighted by the rising sun, — in it there is freshness and — already 
— warmth, mystery, and splendor, with skies of the sweetest har- 
mony. A Dance at Sunset expresses the close of a beautiful day. 
One sees in it, one feels in it the decline of the heat of the day ; 
in the foreground are some shepherds and shepherdesses dancing 
by the side of their flocks. 1 

Is it not strange, that Champagne has been put in the Flemish 
school f He was born at Brussels, it is true, but he came very 
early to Paris, and his true master was Poussin, who counselled 
him. He devoted his talent to France, lived there, died there, 
and what is decisive, his manner is wholly French. Will it be 



1 The pictures of Claude Lorrain, of which, we have just spoken, are iu the 
Museum of Paris. In all there are thirteen, whilst the Museum of Madrid 
alone possesses almost as many, while there are in England more than fifty, 
and those the most admirable. See the Appendix. 

2 The last Notice of the Pictures exhibited in the Gallery of the National Mu- 
seum of the Louvre, 1852, although its author, M. Villot, is surely a man of 
incontestable knowledge and taste, persists in placing Champagne in the 
Flemish school. .En revanche, a learned foreigner, M. Waagen, claims him 
for the French school. KunstwerJce and Kiinstler in Paris, Berlin, 1839, 
p. 651. 



198 LECTURE TENTH. 

said that he owes to Flanders his color ? We respond that this 
quality is balanced by a grave defect that he also owes to Flan- 
ders, the want of ideality in the figures ; and it was from France 
that he learned how to repair this defect by beauty of moral ex- 
pression. Champagne is inferior to Lesueur and Poussin, but he 
is of their family. He was, also, of those artists contemporaneous 
with Corneille, simple, poor, virtuous, Christian. 1 Champagne 
worked both for the convent of the Carmelites in the Rue St. 
Jacques, that venerable abode of ardent and sublime piety, and 
Port-Royal, that place of all others that contained in the smallest 
space the most virtue and genius, so many admirable men and 
women worthy of them. What has become of that famous cru- 
cifix that he painted for the Church of the Carmelites, a master- 
piece of perspective that upon a horizontal plane appeared per- 
pendicular ? It perished with the holy house. The Last Supper 
(Cene) is a living picture, on account of the truth of all the figures, 
movements, and postures ; but to my eyes it is blemished by the 
absence of the ideal. I am obliged to say as much of the Repast 
with Simon the Pharisee. The chef-d'oeuvre of Champagne is " 
the Apparition of St. Gervais and St. Protais to St. Ambrose in 
a Basilica of Milan. All the qualities of French art are seen in 
it, — simplicity and grandeur in composition, with a profound 
expression. On that canvas are only four personages, the two 
martyrs and St. Paul, who presents them to St. Ambrose. Those 
four figures fill the temple, lighted above all in the obscurity of 



1 Well .appreciated by Richelieu, he preferred his esteem to his benefits. 
One day when an envoy of Richelieu said to him that he had only to ask 
freely what he wished for the advancement of his fortune, Champagne re- 
sponded that if M. the Cardinal could make him a more skilful painter than he 
was, it was the only thing that he asked of his Eminence ; but that being im- 
possible, he only desired the honor of his good graces. Felibien, Entretiens, 
1st edition, 4to., part v., p. 171 ; and de Piles, Abrege de la Vie des Peintres, 
2d edition, p. 500. — "As he had much love for justice and truth, provided 
he satisfied what they both demanded, he easily passed over all the rest."— 
Necrologe de Port-Royal, p. 836. 



FEENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 199 

the night, by the luminous apparition. The two martyrs are full 
of majesty. St. Ambrose, kneeling and in prayer, is, as it were, 
seized with terror. 1 

I certainly admire Champagne as an historical painter, and even 
as a landscape painter ; but he is perhaps greatest as a portrait 
painter. In portraits truth and nature are particularly in their 
place, relieved by coloring, and idealized in proper measure by 
expression. The portraits of Champagne are so many monu- 
ments in which his most illustrious contemporaries will live for- 
ever. Every thing about them is strikingly real, grave, and 
severe, with a penetrating sweetness. Should the records of Port- 
Royal be lost, all Port-Royal might be found in Champagne. 
Among those portraits we see the inflexible Saint-Cyran, 2 as well 
as his persecutor, the imperious Richelieu. 3 We see, too, the 
learned, the intrepid Antoine Arnaud, to whom the contempora- 
ries of Bossuet decreed the name of Great ; 4 and Mine. Angelique 
Arnaud, with her naive and strong figure. 5 Among them is 
mother Agnes and the humble daughter of Champagne himself, 
sister St. Suzanne. 6 She has just been miraculously cured, and 
her whole prostrated person bears still the impress of a relic of 
suffering. Mother Agnes, kneeling before her, regards her with 
a look of grateful joy. The place of the scene is a poor cell ; a 
wooden cross hanging on the wall, and some straw chairs, are all 
the ornaments. On the picture is the inscription, — Christo uni 
medico animarum et corpomtm, etc. There is possessed the 



1 See the Appendix. 

a The original is in the Museum of Grenohle ; but see the engraving of 
Morin ; see also that of Daret, after the beautiful design of Demonstier. 

3 In the Museum of the Louvre ; see also the engraving of Morin. 

4 The original is now in the Chateau of Sable, belonging to the Marquis of 
Eouge ; see the engraving of Simonneau in Perrault. The beautiful engra- 
ving of Edelinck was made after a different original, attributed *to a nephew 
of Champagne. 

6 The original is also in the possession of the Marquis of Eouge ; the ad- 
mirable engraving of Van Schupen may take its place. 
6 In the Museum. 



200 LECTURE TENTH. 

Christian stoicism of Port-Royal in its imposing austerity. Add 
to all these portraits that of Champagne ; 1 for the painter may 
be put by the side of his personages. 

Had France produced in the seventeenth century only these 
four great artists, it would be necessary to give an important 
place to the French school ; but she counts many other painters 
of the greatest merit. Among these we may distinguish P. 
Mignard, so much admired in his times, so little known now, and 
so worthy of being known. How have we been able to let fall 
into oblivion the author of the immense fresco of Val-de-grdce, 
so celebrated by Moliere, which is perhaps the greatest page of 
painting in the world ! 2 What strikes at first, in this gigantic 
work, is the order and harmony. Then come a thousand charm- 
ing details and innumerable episodes which form themselves im- 
portant compositions. Remark also the brilliant and sweet 
coloring which should at least obtain favor for so many other 
beauties of the first order. Again, it is to the pencil of Mignard 
that we owe that ravishing ceiling of a small apartment of the 
King at Versailles, a master-piece now destroyed, but of which 
there remains to us a magnificent translation in the beautiful en- 
graving of Gerard Audran. What profound expression in the 
Plague of JEacus? and in the St. Charles giving the Communion 



1 In the Museum, and engraved by Gerard Edelinck. 

2 La Gloire du Val-de- Grace, in 4to, 1669, with a frontispiece and vignettes. 
Moliere there enters into infinite details on all the parts of the art of painting 
and the genius of Mignard. He pushes eulogy perhaps to the extent of hy- 
perbole ; afterwards, hyperbole gave place to the most shameful indifference. 
The fresco of the dome of Val-de grace is composed of four rows of figures, 
which rise in a circle from the base to the vertex of the arch. In the upper 
part is the Trinity, above which is raised a resplendent sky. Below the 
Trinity are the celestial powers. Descending a degree, we see the Virgin 
and the holy personages of the Old and New Testament. Finally, at the 
lower extremity is Anne of Austria, introduced into paradise by St. Anne 
and St. Louis, and these three figures are accompanied by a multitude of 
personages pertaining to the history of France, among whom are distin- 
guished Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, etc. 

3 Engraved by Gerard Audran under the name of the Plague of Dwid 
(la Peste de David). What has become of the original ? 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 201 

to the Plague-infected of Milan! Mignard is recognized as one 
of our best portrait painters : grace, sometimes a little too refined, 
is joined in him to sentiment. The French school can also pre- 
sent with pride Valentin, who died young and was so full of 
promise ; Stella, the worthy friend of Poussin, the uncle of Clau- 
dine, Antoinette, and Francoise Stella ; Lahyre, who has so much 
spirit and taste j 1 Sebastien Bourdon, so animated and elevated ; 2 
the Lenains, who sometimes have the naivete of Lesueur and the 
color of Champagne ; Bourguignon, full of fire and enthusiasm ; 
Jouvenet, whose composition is so good ; 3 finally, besides so many 
others, Lebrun, whom it is now the fashion to treat cavalierly, 
who received from nature, with perhaps an immoderate passion 
for fame, passion for the beautiful of every kind, and a talent of 
admirable flexibility, — the true painter of a great king by the 
richness and dignity of his manner, who, like Louis XIV., 
worthily closes the seventeenth century. 4 

Since we have spoken somewhat extensively of painting, would 
it not be unjust to pass in silence over engraving, its daughter, 
or its sister ? Certainly it is not an art of ordinary importance ; 
we have excelled in it ; we have above all carried it to its per- 
fection in portraits. Let us be equitable to ourselves. What 
school — and we are not unmindful of those of Marc' Antonio, 
Albert Durer, and Rembrandt — can present such a succession of 
artists of this kind ? Thomas de Leu and Leonard Gautier make 



1 See his Landscape at Sunset, and the Batliers (les Baigneuses), an agreea- 
ble scene somewhat blemished by careless drawing. 

2 It would be necessary to cite all his compositions. In his Holy Family 
the figure of the Virgin, without being celestial, admirably expresses medi- 
tation and reflection. We lost some time ago the most important work of 
S. Bourdon, the Sept CEuvres de Misericorde. See the Appendix. 

3 See especially his Extreme Unction. 

4 The picture that is called le Silence, which represents the sleep of the in- 
fant Jesus, is not unworthy of Poussin. The head of the infant is of super- 
human power. The Battles of Alexander, with their defects, arc pages of 
history of the highest order ; and in the Alexander visiting with Ephcdion 
the Mother and the Wife of Darius, one knows not which to admire most, the 
noble ordering of the whole or the just expression of the figures. 

9* 



202 LECTURE TENTH. 

in some sort the passage from the sixteenth to the seventeenth 
century. Then come a crowd of men of the most diverse talents, 
— Mellan, Michel Lasne, Morin, Daret, Huret, Masson, Nanteuil, 
Drevet, Van Schupen, the Poillys, the Edelincks, and the Audrans. 
Gerard Edelinck and Nanteuil alone have a popular renown, and 
they merit it by the delicacy, splendor, and charm of their graver. 
But the connoisseurs of elevated taste find at least their rivals in 
engravers now less admired, because they do not flatter the eye 
so much, but have, perhaps, more truth and vigor. It must also 
be said, that the portraits of these two masters have not the 
historic importance of those of their predecessors. The Conde 
of Nanteuil is justly admired ; but if we wish to know the great 
Conde, the conqueror of Rocroy and Lens, we must not demand 
him from Nanteuil, but from Huret, Michel Lasne, and Daret, 1 
who designed and engraved him in all his force and heroic 
beauty. Edelinck and Nanteuil himself scarcely knew and re- 
traced the seventeenth century, except at the approach of its 
decline. 2 Morin and Mellan were able to see it, and transmit it 
in its glorious youth. Morin is the Champagne of engraving : 
he does not engrave, he paints. It is he who represents and 
transmits to posterity the illustrious men of the first half of the 
great century — Henry IV., Louis XIII., the de Thous, Berulle, 
Jansenius, Saint-Cyran, Marillac, Bentivoglio, Richelieu, Mazarin, 



1 It seems that Lesueur sometimes furnished Daret with designs. It is 
indeed to Lesueur that Daret owes the idea and the design of his chef- 
d'oeuvre, the portrait of Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti, represented in 
his earliest youth, and in an abbe, sustained and surrounded by angels of 
different size, forming a charming composition. The drawing is completely 
pure, except some imperfect fore-shortenings. The little angels that sport 
with the emblems of the future cardinal are full of spirit, and, at the same 
time, sweetness. 

' 2 Edelinck saw only the reign of Louis XIV. Nanteuil was able to en- 
grave very few of the great men of the time of Louis XIII., and the regency, 
and in the latter part of their life ; Mazarin, in his last five or six years ; 
Cond6, growing old ; Turenne, old ; Fouquet and Matthicu Mole, some years 
before the fall of the one and the death of the other ; and he was too often 
obliged to waste his talent upon a crowd of parliamentarians, ecclesiastics, 
and obscure financiers. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 203 

still young, and Eetz, when he was only a coadjutor. 1 Mellan 
had the same advantage. He is the first in date of all the en- 
gravers of the seventeenth century, and perhaps is also the most 
expressive. With a single line, it seems that from his hands 
only shades can spring ; he does not strike at first sight ; but the 
more we regard him, the more he seizes, penetrates, and touches, 
like Lesueur. 2 

Christianity, that is to say, the reign of the spirit, is favorable 
to painting, is particularly expressive. Sculpture seems to be a 
pagan art ; for, if it must also contain moral expression, it is al- 
ways under the imperative condition of beauty of form. This is 
the reason why sculpture is as it were natural to antiquity, and 
appeared there with an incomparable splendor, before which 
painting somewhat paled, 3 whilst among the moderns it has been 
eclipsed by painting, and has remained very inferior to it, by 
reason of the extreme difficulty of bringing stone and marble to 
express Christian sentiment, without which, material beauty suf- 
fers ; so that our sculpture is too insignificant to be beautiful, 
too mannered to be expressive. Since antiquity, there have 
scarcely been two schools of sculpture : 4 — one at Florence, before 
Michael Angelo, and especially with Michael Angelo ; the other 



1 If I wished to make any one acquainted with the greatest and most neg- 
lected portion of the seventeenth century, that which Voltaire almost wholly 
omitted, I would set him to collecting the works of Morin. 

2 Mellan not only made portraits after the celebrated painters of his 
time, he is himself the author of great and charming compositions, many of 
which serve as frontispieces to books. I willingly call attention to that one 
which is at the head of a folio edition of the Introduction a la Vie Devote, and 
to the beautiful frontispieces of the writings of Richelieu, from the press of 
the Louvre. 

3 This was the opinion of Winkelmann at the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury ; it is our opinion now, even after all the discoveries that have been 
made during fifty years, that may be seen in great part retraced and described 
in the jlfusio real Barbo?iico. 

4 There was doubtless sculpture in the middle age : the innumerable fig- 
ures at the portals of our cathedrals, and the statues that are discovered 
every day sufficiently testify it. The imagers of that time certainly had 
much spirit and imagination ; but, at least in every thing that we have seen, 
beauty is absent, and taste wanting. 



204: LECTURE TENTH. 

in France, at the Renaissance, with Jean Cousin, Goujon, Ger- 
main Pilon. We may say that these three artists have, as it 
were, shared among themselves grandeur and grace : to the first 
belong nobility and force, with profound knowledge; 1 to the 
other two, an elegance full of charm. Sculpture changes its 
character in the seventeenth century as well as every thing else : 
it no longer has the same attraction, but it finds moral and reli- 
gious inspiration, which the skilful masters of the Renaissance 
too much lacked. Jean Cousin excepted, is there one of them 
that is superior to Jacques Sarazin ? That great artist, now al- 
most forgotten, is at once a disciple of the French school and 
the Italian school, and to the qualities that he borrows from his 
predecessors, he adds a moral expression, touching and elevated, 
which he owes to the spirit of the new school. He is, in sculp- 
ture, the worthy contemporary of Lesueur and Poussin, of Cor- 
neille, Descartes, and Pascal. He belongs entirely to the reign 
of Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Mazarin ; he did not even see that 
of Louis XIV. 2 Called into France by Richelieu, who had also 
called there Poussin and Champagne, Jacques Sarazin in a few 
years produced a multitude of works of rare elegance and great 
character. What has become of them ? The eighteenth century 
passed over them without regarding them. The barbarians that 
destroyed or scattered them, were arrested before the paintings 
of Lesueur and Poussin, protected by a remnant of admiration : 
while breaking the master-pieces of the French chisel, they had 
no suspicion of the sacrilege they were committing against art as 
well as their country. I was at least able to see, some years 
ago, at the Museum of French Monuments, collected by the 
piety of a friend of the arts, beautiful parts of a superb mauso- 

1 Go and see at the Museum of Versailles the statue of Francis I., and say 
whether any Italian, except the author of the Laurent de Medicis, has made 
any thing like it. See also in the Museum of the Louvre, the statue of Ad- 
miral Chabot. 

2 Sarazin died in 1660, Lesueur in 1655, Poussin in 1665, Descartes in 
1650, Pascal in 1662, and the genius of Corncille did not extend beyond that 
epoch. 



FRENCH ART EN" THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 205 

leum erected to the memory of Henri de Bourbon, second of the 
name, Prince of Conde, father of the great Conde, the worthy 
support, the skilful fellow-laborer of Richelieu and Mazaiki. 
This monument was supported by four figures of natural gran- 
deur, — Faith, Prudence, Justice, Charity. There were four bas- 
reliefs in bronze, representing the Triumphs of Renown, Time, 
Death, and Eternity. In the Triumph of Death, the artist had 
represented a certain number of illustrious moderns, among 
whom he had placed himself by the side of Michael Angelo. 1 
We can still contemplate in the court of the Louvre, in the pa- 
vilion of the Horloge, those caryatides of Sarazin at once so ma- 
jestic and so graceful, which are detached with admirable relief 
and lightness. Have Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon done any 
thing more elegant and lifelike ? Those females breathe, and are 
about to move. Take the pains to go a short distance 2 to visit 
the humble chapel that now occupies the place of that magnifi- 
cent church of the Carmelites, once filled with the paintings of 
Champagne, Stella, Lahire, and Lebrun ; where the voice of 
Bossuet was heard, where Mile, de Lavalliere and Mme. de Lon- 
gueville were so often seen prostrated, their long hair shorn, and 
their faces bathed in tears. Among the relics that are preserved 
of the past splendor of the holy monastery, consider the noble 
statue of the kneeling Cardinal de Berulle. On those meditative 
and penetrating features, in those eyes raised to heaven, breathes 
the soul of that great servant of God, who died at the altar like 
a warrior on the field of honor. He prays God for his dear 



1 Lenoir, Musee des Monuments Frangais, vol. v., p. 87-91, and the Musee 
Boyale des Monuments Frangais of 1815, p. 98, 99, 108, 122, and 140. This 
wonderful monument, erected to Henri de Bourbon, at the expense of his 
old intendant Perrault, president of the Chambre des Comptes, was placed in 
the Church of the Jesuits, and was wholly in bronze. It must not be con- 
founded with the other monument that the Condes erected to the same 
prince in their family burial-ground at Vallery, near Montereau, in Yonne. 
This monument is in marble, and by the hand of Michel Anguicr; see the 
description in Lenoir, vol. v., p. 23-25, and especially in the Annualvc de 
V Tonne povr 1842, p. 175, etc. 

2 Rue d'Enfer, No. 67. 



206 LECTURE TENTH. 

Carmelites. That head is perfectly natural, as Champagne 
might have painted it, and has a severe grace that reminds one 
of Lesueur and Poussin. 1 

Below Sarazin, the Anguiers are still artists that Italy would 
admire, and to whom there is wanting, since the great century, 
nothing but judges worthy of them. These two brothers covered 
Paris and France with the most precious monuments. Look at 
the tomb of Jacques-Auguste de Thou, by Francois Anguier: 
the face of the great historian is reflective and melancholy, like 
that of a man weary of the spectacle of human things ; and 
nothing is more amiable than the statues of his two wives, Marie 
Barbancon de Cany, and Gasparde de la Chatre. 2 The mauso- 
leum of Henri de Montmorency, beheaded at Toulouse in 1632, 
which is still seen at Moulins, in the church of the ancient con- 
vent of the daughters of Sainte-Marie, is an important work of 
the same artist, in which force is manifest, with a little heaviness. 3 
To Michel Anguier are attributed the statues of the duke and 
duchess of Tresmes, and that of their illustrious son, Potier, Mar- 
quis of Gevres. 4 Behold in him the intrepid companion of Conde, 



1 The Museum of the Louvre possesses only a very small number of Sara- 
zin's works, and those of very little importance : — a bust of Pierre Seguier, 
strikingly true, two statuettes full of grace, and the small funeral monument 
of Hennequin, Abbe of Bernay, member of Parliament, who died in 1651, 
which is a chef-d'oeuvre of elegance. 

2 These three statues were united in the Museum des Petits-Augustins, 
Lenoir, Muste-royal, etc., p. 94 ; we know not why they have been separated ; 
Jacques-Auguste de Thou has been placed in the Louvre, and his two wives 
at Versailles. 

* Frangois Anguier had made a marble tomb of Cardinal de Berulle, which 
was in the oratory of Rue St. Ilonore. It would have been interesting to 
compare this statue with that of Sarazin, which is still at the Carmelites. 
FraiKjois is also the author of the monument of the Longuevilles, which, 
before the Revolution, was at the Celestins, and was seen in 1815 at the 
museum des Petit- Aug ustins, Lenoir, ibid., p. 103 ; it is now in the Louvre. 
It is an obelisk, the four sides of which are covered with allegorical bas- 
reliefs. The pedestal, also ornamented with bas-reliefs, has four female figures 
in marble, representing the cardinal virtues. 

4 Now at Versailles. Lenoir, p. 97 and 100. See his portrait, painted by 
Champagne, and engraved by Morin. 



FRENCH ART IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 207 

arrested in his course at thirty-two years of age before Thionville, 
after the battle of Rocroy, already lieutenant-general, and when 
Conde was demanding for him the baton of a marshal of France, 
deposited on his tomb ; behold him young, beautiful, brave, like 
his comrades cut down also in the flower of life, Laval, Chatillon, 
La Moussaye. One of the best works of Michel Anguier is the 
monument of Henri de Chabot, that other companion, that faithful 
friend of Conde, who by the splendor of his valor, especially by 
the graces of his person, knew how to gain the heart, the fortune, 
and the name of the beautiful Marguerite, the daughter of the 
great Duke of Rohan. The new duke died, still young, in 1655, 
at thirty-nine years of age. He is represented lying down, the 
head inclined and supported by an angel ; another angel is at his 
feet. The whole is striking, and the details are exquisite. The 
face of Chabot has every beauty, as if to answer to its reputation, 
but the beauty is that of one dying. The body has already the 
languor of death, longuescit moriens, with I know not what an- 
tique grace. This morsel, if the drawing were more severe, would 
rival the Dying Gladiator, of which it reminds one, which it per- 
haps even imitates. 1 

In truth, I wonder that men now dare speak so lightly of Puget 
and Girardon. To Puget qualities of the first order cannot be 
refused. He has the fire, the enthusiasm, the fecundity of genius. 
The caryatides of the Hotel de Ville of Toulon, which have been 
brought to the Museum of Paris, attest a powerful chisel. The 
Milon reminds one of the manner of Michael Angelo ; it is a little 
overstrained, but it cannot be denied that the effect is striking. 



1 Group in white marble which, was at the Celestins, a church near the 
liotel of Rohan-Chabot in the Place Roy ale ', re-collected in the Museum den 
Petits-Augustins, Lenoir, ibid., p. 97 ; it is now at Versailles. We must not- 
pass over that beautiful production, the mausoleum of Jacques de Scuvre, 
Grand Prior of France, the brother of the beautiful Marchioness de Sable ; 
a mausoleum that came from Saint-Jean de Latran, passed through the Mu- 
seum des Petits-AvgvMins, and is now found in the Louvre. The sculptures 
of the porte Saint-Denis are also owed to Michel Anguier, as well as the 
admirable bust of Colbert, which is in the museum. 



208 LECTURE TENTH. 

Do you want a talent more natural, and still having force and 
elevation ? Take the trouble to search in the Tuileries, in the 
gardens of Versailles, in several churches of Paris, for the scatter- 
ed works of Girardon, here for the mausoleum of the Gondis, 1 
there for that of the Castellans, 2 that of Louvois, 3 etc. ; especially 
go to see in the church of the Sorbonne the mausoleum of Riche- 
lieu. The formidable minister is there represented in his last 
moments, sustained by religion and wept by his country. The 
whole person is of a perfect nobility, and the figure has the fineness, 
the severity, the superior distinction given to it by the pencil of 
Champagne, and the gravers of Morin, Michel Lasne, and Mellan. 
Finally, I do not regard as a vulgar sculptor Coysevox, who, 
under the influence of Lebrun, unfortunately begins the theatrical 
style, who still has the facility, movement, and elegance of Lebrun 
himself. He reared worthy monuments to Mazarin, Colbert, and 
Lebrun, 4 and thus to speak, sowed busts of the illustrious men of 
his time. For, remark it well, artists then took scarcely any 
arbitrary and fanciful subjects. They worked upon contempora- 
neous subjects, which, while giving them proper liberty, inspired 
and guided them, and communicated a public interest to their 
works. The French sculpture of the seventeenth century, like 
that of antiquity, is profoundly natural. The churches and the 
monasteries were filled with the statues of those who loved them 
during life, and wished to rest in them after death. Each church 
of Paris was a popular museum. The sumptuous residences of 
the aristocracy — for at that period, there was one in France, like 



1 At first at Notre-Dame, the natural place for the tombs of the Gondis, 
then at the Augustins, now at Versailles. 

a In the Church St. Germain des Pres. 

' At the Capuchins, then at the Augustins, then at Versailles. 

4 See, on these monuments, Lenoir, p. 98, 101, 102. That of Mazarin is 
now at the Louvre ; that of Colbert has been restored to the Church of St. 
Eustache, and that of Lebrun to the Church St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, as 
well as the mausoleum, so expressive but a little overstrained, of the mother 
of Lebrun, by Tuby, and the mausoleum of Jerome Bignon, the celebrated 
Councillor of State, who died in 1656. 



FRENCH ART IN" THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 209 

that of England at the present time — possessed their secular 
tombs, statues, busts, and portraits of eminent men whose glory 
belonged to the country as well as their own family. On its side, 
the state did not encourage the arts in detail, and, thus to speak, 
in a small way; it gave them a powerful impulse by demanding 
of them important works, by confiding to them vast enterprises. 
All great things were thus mingled together, reciprocally inspired 
and sustained each other. 

One man alone in Europe has left a name in the beautiful art 
that surrounds a chateau or a palace with graceful gardens or 
magnificent parks, — that man is a Frenchman of the seventeenth 
century, is Le Xotre. Le Notre may be reproached with a regu- 
larity that is perhaps excessive, and a little mannerism in details ; 
but he has two qualities that compensate for many defects, gran- 
deur and sentiment. He who designed the park of Versailles, 
who to the proper arrangement of parterres, to the movement of 
fountains, to the harmonious sound of waterfalls, to the mysteri- 
ous shades of groves, has known how to add the magic of infinite 
perspective by means of that spacious walk where the view is 
extended over an immense sheet of water to be lost in the limit- 
less distances, — he is a landscape-painter worthy of having a place 
by the side of Poussin and Lorrain. 

We had in the middle age our Gothic architecture, like all the 
nations of northern Europe. In the sixteenth century what archi- 
tects were Pierre Lescot, Jean Bullant, and Philibert Delorme ! 
What charming palaces, what graceful edifices, the Tuileries, the 
Hotel de Ville of Paris, Chambord, and Ecouen ! The seventeenth 
century also had its original architecture, different from that of 
the middle age and that of the Renaissance, simple, austere, noble, 
like the poetry of Corneille and the prose of Descartes. Study 
without scholastic prejudice the Luxembourg of de Brosses, 1 the 



1 Quatremere de Quincy, Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de plus Cilibres 
Archltectes, vol. ii., p. 145 : — "There could scarcely be found in any country 
an ensemble so grand, which offers with so much unity and regularity an 
aspect at once more varied and picturesque, especially in the facade ot" the 



210 LECTURE TENTH. 

portal of Saint-Gervais, and the great hall of the Palais de Jus- 
tice, by the same architect ; the Palais Cardinal and the Sorbonne 
of Lemercier ;* the cupola of Val-de-Grace by Lemuet f the tri- 
umphal arch of the Porte Saint-Denis by Francois Blondel ; Ver- 
sailles, and especially the Invalides, of Mansart. 3 Consider with 
attention the last edifice, let it make its impression on your mind 
and soul, and you will easily succeed in recognizing in it a par- 
ticular beauty. It is not a Gothic monument, neither is it an 
almost Pagan monument of the sixteenth century, — it is modern, 
and also Christian ; it is vast with measure, elegant with gravity. 
Contemplate at sunset that cupola reflecting the last rays of day, 
elevating itself gently towards the heavens in a slight and grace- 
ful curve ; cross that imposing esplanade, enter that court admi- 
rably lighted in spite of its covered galleries, bow beneath the 
dome of that church where Vauban and Turenne sleep, — you 
will not be able to guard yourself from an emotion at once reli- 
gious and military ; you will say to yourself that this is indeed 
the asylum of warriors who have reached the evening of life and 
are prepared for eternity ! 

Since then, what has French architecture become? Once hav- 
ing left tradition and national character, it wanders from imitation 
to imitation, and without comprehending the genius of antiquity, 
it unskilfully reproduces its forms. This bastard architecture, at 
once heavy and mannered, is, little by little, substituted for the 
beautiful architecture of the preceding century, and everywhere 

entrance." Unfortunately this unity has disappeared, thanks to the con- 
structions that have since been added to the primitive work. 

1 In order to appreciate the beauty of the Sorbonne, one must stand in the 
lower part of the great court, and from that point consider the effect of the 
successive elevation, at first of the other part of the court, then of the differ- 
ent stories of the portico, then of the portico itself, of the church, and, finally, 
of the dome. 

3 Quatremere de Quincy, Ibid., p. 257 : — " The cupola of this edifice is one 
of the finest in Europe." 

8 We do not speak of the colonnade of the Louvre by Perrault, because, 
in spite of its grand qualities, it begins the decline and marks the passage 
from the serious to the academic style, from originality to imitation, from the 
seventeenth century to the eighteenth. 



FRENCH ART IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 211 

effaces the vestiges of the French spirit. Do you wish a strikino- 
example of it ? In Paris, near the Luxembourg, the Condes had 
their hdtel,' 1 magnificent and severe, with a military aspect, ?$ it 
was fittiDg for the dwelling-place of a family of warriors, and 
within of almost royal splendor. Beneath those lofty ceilings had 
been some time suspended the Spanish flags taken at Rocroy. In 
those vast saloons had been assembled the elite of the grandest 
society that ever existed. In those beautiful gardens had been 
seen promenading Corneille and Madame de Sevigne, Moliere, 
Bossuet, Boileau, Racine, in the company of the great Conde. 
The oratory had been painted by the hand of Lesueur.'- It had 
been easy to repair and preserve the noble habitation. At the 
end of the eighteenth century, a descendant of the Condes sold 
it to a dismal company to build that palace without character 
and taste which is called' the Palais-Bourbon. Almost at the 
same epoch there was a movement made to construct a church to 
the patroness of Paris, to that Genevieve, whose legend is so 
touching and so popular. Was there ever a better chance for a 
national and Christian monument ? It was possible to return to 
the Gothic style and even to the Byzantine style. Instead of 
that there was made for us an immense Roman basilica of the 
Decline. What a dwelling for the modest and holv virgin, so 
dear to the fields that bordered upon Lutece, whose name is still 
venerated by the poor people who inhabit these quarters ! Be- 
hold the church which has been placed by the side of that of 
Saint-Etienne du Mont, as if to make felt all the differences 
between Christianity and Paganism ! For here, in spite of a 



1 See the engraving of Perelle. Sauval, vol. ii., p. 66 and p. 181, Bays that 
the hotel of Conde was magniji-cently built, that it was the most magnijicait of 
the time. 

a Notice of Guillet de St. Georges, recently published (see the Appendix) : 
— "Nearly at the same time the Princess-dowager de Conde, Charlotte-Mar- 
guerite de Montmorency, mother of the late prince, had an oratory painted 
by Lesueur in the hotel of Conde. The altar-piece represents a Xativity, 
that of the ceiling a Celestial Glory. The wainscot is enriched with several 
figures and with a quantity of ornaments worked with great care." 



212 LECTUEE TENTH. 

mixture of the most different styles, it is evident that the Pagan 
style predominates. Christian worship cannot be naturalized in 
this profane edifice, which has so many times changed its desti- 
nation. It is in vain to call it anew Saint-Genevieve, — the revo- 
lutionary name of Pantheon will stick to it. 1 The eighteenth 
century treated the Madeleine no better than Saint-Genevieve. 
In vain the beautiful sinner wished to renounce the joys of the 
world and attach herself to the poverty of Jesus Christ. She has 
been brought back to the pomp and luxury that she repudiated; 
she has been put in a rich palace, all shining with gold, which 
might very well be a temple of Venus, for certainly it has not the 
severe grace of the Pantheon, of which it is the most vulgar copy. 
How far we are from the Invalides, from Val-de-Grace, and the 
Sorbonne, so admirably appropriated to their object, wherein ap- 
pears so well the hand of the century and the country which 
reared them ! 

While architecture thus strays, it is natural that painting 
should seek above every thing color and brilliancy, that sculp- 
ture should apply itself to become Pagan again, that poetry 
itself, receding for two centuries, should abjure the worship of 
thought for that of fancy, that it should everywhere go borrow- 
ing images from Spain, Italy, and Germany, that it should run 
after subaltern and foreign qualities which it will not attain, and 
abandon the grand qualities of the French genius. 

It will be said that the Christian sentiment which animated 
Lesueur and the artists of the seventeenth century is wanting to 
those of ours ; it is extinguished, and cannot be rekindled. In 
the first place, is that very certain ? Native faith is dead, but 
cannot reflective faith take its place ? Christianity is exhaustless ; 
it has infinite resources, and admirable flexibility ; there are a 

1 The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London, which is itself 
a very sad imitation of St. Peter's of Rome. The only merit of the Pantheon 
is its situation on the summit of the hill of St. Genevieve, from which it 
overlooks that part of the town, and is seen on different sides to a considera- 
ble distance. Put in its place the Val-de-GrAce of Lemercier with the dome 
of Lemuet, and judge what would be the effect of such an edifice! 



FEENCH ART EST THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 213 

thousand ways of arriving at it and returning to it, because it 
has itself a thousand phases that answer to the most different 
dispositions, to all the wants, to all the mobility of the heart. 
What it loses on one side, it gains on another ; and as it has pro- 
duced our civilization, it is called to follow it in all its vicissitudes. 
Either every religion will perish in this world, or Christianity 
will endure, for it is not in the power of thought to conceive a 
more perfect religion. Artists of the nineteenth century, do not 
despair of God and yourselves. A superficial philosophy has 
thrown you far from Christianity considered in a strict sense ; 
another philosophy can bring you near it again by making you 
see it with another eye. And then, if the religious sentiment is 
weakened, are there not other sentiments that can make the 
heart of man beat, and fecundate genius ? Plato has said, that 
beauty is always old and always new. It is superior to all its 
forms, it belongs to all countries and all times ; it belongs to all 
beliefs, provided these beliefs be serious and profound, and the 
need be felt of expressing and spreading them. If, then, we 
have not arrived at the boundary assigned to the grandeur of 
France, if we are not beginning to descend into the shade of 
death, if we still truly live, if there remain to us convictions, of 
whatever kind they may be, thereby even remains to us, or at 
least may remain to us, what made the glory of our fathers, 
what they did not carry with them to the tomb, what had al- 
ready survived all revolutions, Greece, Rome, the Middle Age, 
what does not belong to any temporary or ephemeral accident, 
what subsists and is continually found in the focus of conscious- 
ness — I mean moral inspiration, immortal as the soul. 

Let us terminate here, and sum up this defence of the national 
art. There are in arts, as well as in letters and philosophy, two 
contrary schools. One tends to the ideal in all things, — it seeks, 
it tries to make appear the spirit concealed under the form, at 
once manifested and veiled by nature ; it does not so much wish 
to please the senses and flatter the imagination as to enlarge the 
intellect and move the soul. The other, enamored of nature, 



214 LECTUEE TENTH. 

stops there and devotes itself to imitation, — its principal object 
is to reproduce reality, movement, life, which are for it the su- 
preme beauty. The France of the seventeenth century, the 
France of Descartes, Corneille, and Bossuet, highly spiritual in 
philosophy, poetrjr, and eloquence, was also highly spiritual in 
the arts. The artists of that great epoch participate in its gen- 
eral character, and represent it in their way. It is not true that 
they lacked imagination, more than Pascal and Bossuet lacked 
it. But inasmuch as they do not suffer imagination to usurp 
the dominion that does not belong to it, inasmuch as they sub- 
ject its order, even its impetuosity, to the reign of reason and 
the inspirations of the heart, it seems that it is not so strong 
when it is only disciplined and regulated. As we have said, 
they excel in composition, especially in expression. They always 
have a thought, and a moral and elevated thought. For this 
reason they are dear to us, their cause interests us, is in some 
sort our own cause, and so this homage rendered to their mis- 
understood glory naturally crowns these lectures devoted to true 
beauty, that is to say, moral beauty. 

May these lectures be able to make it known, and, above all, 
loved ! May they be able also to inspire some one of you with 
the idea of devoting himself to studies so beautiful, of devoting 
to them his life, and attaching to them his name ! The sweetest 
recompense of a professor who is not too unworthy of that title, 
is to see rapidly following in his footsteps young and noble 
spirits who easily pass him and leave him far behind them. 1 

1 In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was M. Jouf- 
froy, who already under our auspices, had presented to thofaculte des lettres, 
in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis on the beautiful. M. Jouf- 
froy had cultivated, with care and particular taste, the seeds that our teach- 
ing might have planted in his mind. But of all those who at that epoch or 
later frequented our lectures, no one was better fitted to embrace the entire 
domain of beauty or art than the author of the beautiful articles on Eus- 
tache Lesueur, the Cathedral of Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses 
all the knowledge, and, what is more, all the qualities requisite for a judge 
of every kind of beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to the neces- 
sity of addressing to him the public petition that he may not be wanting to 
a vocation so marked and so elevated. 



PART THIRD 



THE GOOD 



LECTURE XI. 

PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 

Extent of the question of the good. — Position of the question according to 
the psychological method: What is, in regard to the good, the natural 
belief of mankind ? — The natural beliefs of humanity must not be sought 
in a pretended state of nature. — Study of the sentiments and ideas of men 
in languages, in life, in consciousness. — Disinterestedness and devoted- 
ness. — Liberty. — Esteem and contempt. — Eespect. — Admiration and indig- 
nation.— Dignity. — Empire of opinion. — Eidicule. — Eegret and repent- 
ance. — Natural and necessary foundations of all justice. — Distinction be- 
tween fact and right. — Common sense, true and false philosophy. 

The idea of the true in its developments, comprises psychology, 
logic, and metaphysics. The idea of the beautiful begets what 
is called aesthetics. The idea of the good is the whole of ethics. 

It would be forming a false and narrow idea of ethics to con- 
fine them within the inclosure of individual consciousness. 
There are public ethics, as well as private ethics, and public 
ethics embrace, with the relations of men among themselves, so 
far as men, their relations as citizens and as members of a state. 
Ethics extend wherever is found in any degree the idea of the 
good. Now, where does this idea manifest itself more, and 
where do justice and injustice, virtue and crime, heroism and 
weakness appear more openly, than on the theatre of civil life ? 
Moreover, is there any thing that has a more decisive influence 
over manners, even of individuals, than the institutions of peoples 
and the constitutions of states ? If the idea of the good goes 



216 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

thus far, it must be followed thither, as recently the idea of the 
beautiful has introduced us into the domain of art. 

Philosophy usurps no foreign power ; but it is not disposed to 
relinquish its right of examination over all the great manifesta- 
tions of human nature. All philosophy that does not terminate 
in ethics, is hardly worthy of the name, and all ethics that do 
not terminate at least in general views on society and govern- 
ment, are powerless ethics, that have neither counsels nor rules 
to give humanity in its most difficult trials. 

It seems that at the point where we have arrived, the meta- 
physics and aesthetics that we have taught evidently involve such 
■d doctrine of morality and not such another, that, accordingly, 
the question of the good, that question so fertile and so vast, is 
for us wholly solved, and that we can deduce, by way of reason- 
ing, the moral theory that is derived from our theory of the 
beautiful and our theory of the true. We might do this, per- 
haps, but we will not. This would be abandoning the method 
that we have hitherto followed, that method that proceeds by 
observation, and not by deduction, and makes consulting experi- 
ence a law to itself. We do not grow weary of experience. Let 
us attach ourselves faithfully to the psychological method ; it has 
its delays ; it condemns us to more than one repetition, but it 
places us in the beginning, and a long time retains us at the 
source of all reality, and all light. 

The first maxim of the psychological method is this : True 
philosophy invents nothing, it establishes and describes what is. 
Now here, what is, is the natural and permanent belief of the 
being that we are studying, to wit, man. What is, then, in re- 
lation to the good, the natural and permanent belief of the human 
race ? Such is, in our eyes, the first question. 

With us, in fact, the human race does not take one side, and 
philosophy the other. Philosophy is the interpreter of the 
human race. What the human race thinks and believes, often 
unconsciously, philosophy re-collects, explains, establishes. It is 
the faithful and complete expression of human nature, and human 



PKIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 217 

nature is entire in each of us philosophers, and in every other 
man. Among us, it is attained by consciousness ; among other 
men, it manifests itself in their words and actions. Let us, then, 
interrogate the latter and the former ; let us especially interrogate 
our own consciousness ; let us clearly recognize what the human 
race thinks ; we shall then see what should be the office of phi- 
losophy. 

Is there a human lano-uao-e known to us that has not different 
expressions for good and evil, for just and unjust? Is there any 
language, in which, by the side of the words pleasure, interest, 
utility, happiness, are not also found the words sacrifice, disin- 
terestedness, devotedness, virtue ? Do not all languages, as well 
as all nations, speak of liberty, duty, and right ? 

Here, perhaps, some disciple of Condillac and Helvetius will 
ask us whether, in this regard, we possess authentic dictionaries 
of the language of savage tribes found by voyagers in the isles 
of the ocean? !STo ; but we have not made our philosophic re- 
ligion out of the superstitions and prejudices of a certain school. 
We absolutely deny that it is necessary to study human nature 
in the famous savage of Aveyron, or in the like of him of the 
isles of the ocean, or the American continent. The savage state 
offers us humanity in swaddling-clothes, thus to speak, the germ 
of humanity, but not humanity entire. The true man is the per- 
fect man of his kind ; true human nature is human nature ar- 
rived at its development, as true society is also perfected society. 
We do not think it worth the while to ask a savage his opinion 
on the Apollo Belvidere, neither will we ask him for the princi- 
ples that constitute the moral nature of man, because in him this 
moral nature is only sketched and not completed. Our great 
philosophy of the seventeenth century was sometimes a little too 
much pleased with hypotheses in which God plays the principal 
part, and crushes human liberty. 1 The philosophy of the eigh- 



1 See 2d Series, vol. ii., leet. 11 and 12 ; 4th Series, vol. ii., last pages of 
Jacqueline Pascal, and the Fragments of the Cartesian Philosophy, p. 469. 

10 



218 



LECTUKE ELEVENTH. 



teenth century threw itself into the opposite extreme; it had re- 
course to hypotheses of a totally different character, among others, 
to a pretended natural state, whence it undertook, with infinite 
pains, to draw society and man as we now see them. Rousseau 
plunged into the forests, in order to find there the model of lib- 
erty and equality. That is the commencement of his politics. 
But wait a little, and soon you will see the apostle of the natural 
state, driven, by a necessary inconsequence, from one excess to an 
opposite excess, instead of the sweets of savage liberty, proposing 
to us the Contrat Social and Lacedemone. Condillac 1 studies 
the human mind in a statue whose senses enter into exercise un- 
der the magic wand of a systematic analysis, and are developed 
in the measure and progress that are convenient to him. The 
statue successively acquires our five senses, but there is one thing 
that it does not acquire, that is, a mind like the human mind, 
and a soul like ours. And this was what was then called the 
experimental method ! Let us leave there all those hypotheses. 
In order to understand reality, let us study it, and not imagine it. 
Let us take humanity as it is incontestably shown to us in its 
actual characters, and not as it may have been in a primitive, 
purely hypothetical state, in those unformed lineaments or that 
degradation which is called the savage state. In that, without 
doubt, may be found signs or souvenirs of humanity, and, if this 
were the plea, we might, in our turn, examine the recitals of 
voyages, and find, even in that darkness of infancy or decrepitude, 
admirable flashes of light, noble instincts, which already appear, 
or still subsist, presaging or recalling humanity. But, for the 
sake of exactness of method and true analysis, we turn our eyes 
from infancy and the savage state, in order to direct them towards 
the being who is the sole object of our studies, the actual man, 
the real and completed man. 

Do you know a language, a people, which does not possess 
the word disinterested virtue ? Who is especially called an hon- 



1 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures 2 and 3, Condillac. 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 219 

est man ? Is it the skilful calculator, devoting himself to making 
his own affairs the best possible, or he who, under all circum- 
stances, is disposed to observe justice against his apparent or 
real interest ? Take away the idea that an honest man is capa- 
ble, to a certain degree, of resisting the attractions of personal 
interest, and of making some sacrifices for opinion, for propriety, 
for that which is or appears honest, and you take away the 
foundation of that title of honest man, even in the most ordinary 
sense. That disposition to prefer what is good to our pleasure, 
to our personal utility, in a word, to interest — that disposition 
more or less strong, more or less constant, more or less tested, 
measures the different degrees of virtue. A man who carries 
disinterestedness as far as devotion, is called a hero, let him be 
concealed in the humblest condition, or placed on a public stage. 
There is devotedness in obscure as well as in exalted stations. 
There are heroes of probity, of honor, of loyalty, in the relations 
of ordinary life, as well as heroes of courage and patriotism in 
the counsels of peoples and at the head of armies. All these 
names, with their meaning -well recognized, are in all languages, 
and constitute a certain and universal fact. We may explain this 
fact, but on one imperative condition, that in explaining we do 
not destroy it. JSTow, is the idea and the word disinterestedness 
explained to us by reducing disinterestedness to interest ? This 
is what common sense invincibly repels. 

Poets have no system, — they address themselves to men as 
they really are, in order to produce in them certain effects. Is 
it skilful selfishness or disinterested virtue that poets celebrate ? 
Do they demand our applause for the success of fortunate ad- 
dress, or for the voluntary sacrifices of virtue ? The poet knows 
that there is at the foundation of the human soul I know not 
what marvellous power of disinterestedness and devotedness. 
In addressing himself to this instinct of the heart, he is sure of 
awakening a sublime echo, of opening every source of the pa- 
thetic. 

Consult the annals of the human race, and you will find in 



220 LECTTJKE ELEVENTH. 

them man everywhere, and more and more, claiming his liberty. 
This word liberty is as old as man himself. What then ! Men 
wish to be free, and man himself should not be free ! The word 
nevertheless exists with the most determined signification. It 
signifies that man believes himself a free being, not only animated 
and sensible, but endowed with will, a will that belono-s to him, 
that consequently cannot admit over itself the tyranny of another 
will which would make, in regard to him, the office of fatality, 
even were it that of the most beneficent fatality. Do you sup- 
pose that the word liberty could ever have been formed, if the 
thing itself did not exist ? None but a free being could possess 
the idea of liberty. Will it be said that the liberty of man is 
only an illusion ? The wishes of the human race are then the 
most inexplicable extravagance. In denying the essential dis- 
tinction between liberty and fatality, we contradict all languages 
and all received notions ; we have, it is true, the advantage of 
absolving tyrants, but we degrade heroes. They have, then, 
fought and died for a chimera ! 

All languages contain the words esteem and contempt. To 
esteem, to despise, — these are universal expressions, certain phe- 
nomena, from which an impartial analysis can draw the highest 
notions. Can we despise a being who, in his acts, should not be 
free, a being who should not know the good, and should not feel 
himself obligated to fulfil it ? Suppose that the good is not 
essentially different from the evil, suppose that there is in the 
world only interest more or less well understood, that there is 
no real duty, and that man is not essentially a free being, — it is 
impossible to explain rationally the word contempt. It is the 
same with the word esteem. 

Esteem is a fact which, faithfully expressed, contains a com- 
plete philosophy as solid as generous. Esteem has two certain 
characters : 1st, It is a disinterested sentiment in the soul of him 
who feels it ; 2d, It is applied only to disinterested acts. We 
do not esteem at will, and because it is our interest to esteem. 
Neither do we esteem an action or a person because they have 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 221 

been successful. Success, fortunate calculation, may make us 
envied ; it does not bring esteem, which has another price. 

Esteem in a certain degree, and under certain circumstances, 
is respect, — respect, a holy and sacred word which the most 
subtile or the loosest analysis will never degrade to expressing a 
sentiment that is related to ourselves, and is applied to actions 
crowned by fortune. 

Take ao-ain these two words, these two facts analogous to the 
first two, admiration and indignation. Esteem and contempt 
are rather judgments ; indignation and admiration are sentiments, 
but sentiments that pertain to intelligence and envelop a judg- 
ment. 1 

Admiration is an essentially disinterested sentiment. See 
whether there is any interest in the world that has the power to 
give you admiration for any thing or any person. If you were 
interested, you might feign admiration, but you would not feel it. 
A tyrant with death in his hand, may constrain you to appear 
to admire, but not to admire in reality. Even affection does not 
determine admiration ; whilst a heroic trait, even in an enem} T , 
compels you to admire. 

The phenomenon opposed to admiration is indignation. In- 
dignation is no more anger than admiration is desire. Anger is 
wholly personal. Indignation is never directly related to us ; it 
may have birth in the midst of circumstances wherein we are 
engaged, but the foundation and the dominant character of the 
phenomenon in itself is to be disinterested. Indignation is in its 
nature generous. If I am a victim of an injustice, I may feel at 
once anger and indignation, anger against him that injures me, 
indignation towards him who is unjust to one of his fellow-men. 
"We may be indignant towards ourselves ; we are indignant 
tow r ards every thing that wounds the sentiment of justice. Indig- 
nation covers a judgment, the judgment that he who commits 
such or such an action, whether against us, or even for us, does 

1 See the Theory of Sentiment, part i., lecture 5. 



222 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

an action unworthy, contrary to our dignity, to his own dignity, 
to human dignity. The injury sustained is not the measure of 
indignation, as the advantage received is not that of admiration. 
We felicitate ourselves on possessing or having acquired a useful 
thing ; but we never admire, on that account, either ourselves or 
the thing that we have just acquired. So we repel the stone that 
wounds us, we do not feel indignant towards it. 

Admiration elevates and ennobles the soul. The generous 
parts of human nature are disengaged and exalted in presence of, 
and as it were in contact with, the image of the good. This is 
the reason why admiration is already by itself so beneficent, even 
should it be deceived in its object. Indignation is the result of 
these same generous parts of the soul, which, wounded by injus- 
tice, are highly roused and protest in the name of offended human 
dignity. 

Look at men in action, and you will see them imposing upon 
themselves great sacrifices in order to conquer the suffrages of 
their fellows. The empire of opinion is immense, — vanity alone 
does not explain it ; it doubtless also pertains to vanity, but it 
has deeper and better roots. We judge that other men are, like 
us, sensible to good and evil, that they distinguish between virtue 
and vice, that they are capable of being indignant and admiring, 
of esteeming and respecting, as well as despising. This power is 
in us, we have consciousness of it, we know that other men 
possess it as well as we, and it is this power that frightens us. 
Opinion is our own consciousness transferred to the public, and 
there disengaged from all complaisance and armed with an inflex- 
ible severity. To the remorse in our own hearts, responds the 
shame in that second soul which we have made ourselves, and is 
called public opinion. We must not be astonished at the sweets 
of popularity. We are more sure of having done well, when to 
the testimony of our consciousness we are able to join that of the 
consciousness of our fellow-men. There is only one thing that 
can sustain us against opinion, and even place us above it : it is 
the firm and sure testimony of our consciousness, because, in fine, 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 223 

the public and the whole human race are compelled to judge us 
according to appearance, whilst we judge ourselves infallibly and 
by the most certain of all knowledge. 

Ridicule is the fear of opinion in small things. The force of 
ridicule is wholly in the supposition that there is a common taste, 
a common type of what is proper, that directs men in their judg- 
ments, and even in their pleasantries, which in their way are also 
judgments. Without this supposition, ridicule falls of itself, and 
pleasantry loses its sting. But it is immortal, as well as the dis- 
tinction between good and evil, between the beautiful and the 
ugly, between what is proper and what is improper. 

When we have not succeeded in any measure undertaken for 
our interest and prosperity, we experience a sentiment of pain 
that is called regret. But we do not confound regret with that 
other sentiment that rises in the soul when we are conscious of 
having done something morally bad. This sentiment is also a 
pain, but of quite a different nature, — it is remorse, repentance. 
That we have lost in play, for example, is disagreeable to us ; but 
if, in gaining, we have the consciousness of having deceived our 
adversary, we experience a very different sentiment. 

We might prolong and vary these examples. We have said 
enough to be entitled to conclude that human language and the 
sentiments that it expresses are inexplicable, if we do not admit 
the essential distinction between good and evil, between virtue 
and crime, crime founded on interest, virtue founded on disinter- 
estedness. 

Disturb this distinction, and you disturb human life and entire 
society. Permit me to take an extreme, tragic, and terrible ex- 
ample. Here is a man that has just been judged. He has been 
condemned to death, and is about to be executed — to be deprived 
of life. And why ? Place yourself in the system that does not 
admit the essential distinction between good and evil, and ponder 
on what is stupidly atrocious in this act of human justice. What 
has the condemned done ? Evidently a thing indifferent in itself. 
For if there is no other outward distinction than that of pleasure 



224 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

and pain, I defy any one to qualify any human action, whatever 
it may be, as criminal, without the most absurd inconsequence. 
But this thing, indifferent in itself, a certain number of men, called 
legislators, have declared to be a crime. This purely arbitrary 
declaration has found no echo in the heart of this man. He has 
not been able to feel the justice of it, since there is nothing in 
itself just. He has therefore done, without remorse, what this 
declaration arbitrarily interdicted. The court proceeds to prove 
to him that he has not succeeded, but not that he has done con- 
trary to justice, for there is no justice. I maintain that every 
condemnation, be it to death, or to any punishment whatever, 
imperatively supposes, in order to be any thing else than a repres- 
sion of violence by violence, the four following points : — 1st, That 
there is an essential distinction between good and evil, justice and 
injustice, and that to this distinction is attached, for every intelli- 
gent and free being, the obligation of conforming to good and 
justice ; 2d, That man is an intelligent and free being, capable of 
comprehending this distinction, and the obligation that accompa- 
nies it, and of adhering to it naturally, independently of all con- 
vention, and every positive law ; capable also of resisting the 
temptations that bear him towards evil and injustice, and of ful- 
filling the sacred law of natural justice; 3d, That every act 
contrary to justice deserves to be repressed by force, and even 
punished in reparation of the fault committed, and independently 
too of all law and all convention ; 4th, That man naturally recog- 
nizes the distinction between the merit and demerit of actions, as 
he recognizes the distinction between the just and the unjust, and 
knows that every penalty applied to an unjust act is itself most 
strictly just. 

Such are the foundations of that power of judging and punish- 
ing which is entire society. Society has not made those princi- 
ples for its own use ; they are much anterior to it, they are 
contemporaneous with thought and the soul, and upon these rests 
society, with its laws and its institutions. Laws are legitimate 
by their relation to these eternal laws. The surest power of in- 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 225 

stitutions resides in the respect that these principles bear with 
them and extend to every thing that participates in them. Edu- 
cation develops them, it does not create them. They direct the 
legislator who makes the law, and the judge who applies it. 
They are present to the accused brought before the tribunal, they 
inspire every just sentence, they give it authority in the soul of 
the condemned, and in that of the spectator, and they consecrate 
the employment of force necessary for his execution. Take away 
a single one of these principles, and all human justice is over- 
thrown, no longer is there any thing but a mass of arbitrary con- 
ventions which no one in conscience is bound to respect, which 
may be violated without remorse, which are sustained only by 
the display of extreme punishments. The decisions of such a 
justice are not true judgments, but acts of force, and civil society 
is only an arena where men contend with each other without 
duties and rights, without any other object than that of pro- 
curing for themselves the greatest possible amount of enjoyment, 
of procuring it by conquest and preserving it by force or cunning, 
save throwing over all that the cloak of hypocritical laws. 

It is true, such is the aspect under which skepticism makes us 
consider society and human justice, driving us through despair 
to revolt and disorder, and bringing us back through despair 
again to quite another yoke than that of reason and virtue, to 
that regulated disorder which is called despotism. The spectacle 
of human things, viewed coolly, and without the spirit of system, 
is, thank God, less sombre. Without doubt, society and human 
justice have still many imperfections which time discovers and 
corrects ; but it may be said, that in general they rest on truth 
and natural equity. The proof of it is, that society everywhere 
subsists, and is even developed. Moreover, tacts, were they such 
as the melancholy pen of a Pascal or a Rousseau represent them 
to be, facts are not all, — before facts is right ; and this idea of 
right alone, if it is real, suffices to overturn an abasing system, 
and save human dignity. Now, is the idea of right a chimera? 
1 again appeal to languages, to individual consciousness, to the 

10* 



226 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

human race, — is it not true that fact is everywhere distinguished 
from right, fact which too often, perhaps, but not always, as it is 
said, is opposed to right ; and right that subdues and rules fact, 
or protests against it ? What word is it that restrains most in 
human societies ? Is it not that of right ? Look for a language 
that does not contain it. On all sides, society is bristling with 
rights. There is even a distinction made between natural right 
and positive right, between what is legal and what is equitable. 
It is proclaimed that force should be in the service of right, and 
not right at the mercy of force. The triumphs of force, wherever 
we perceive them, either under our eyes, or by the aid of history 
in bygone centuries, or by favor of universal publicity beyond the 
ocean, and in foreign continents, rouse indignation in the disin- 
terested spectator or reader. On the contrary, he who inscribes 
on his banner the name of right, by that alone interests us ; the 
cause of right, or what we suppose to be the cause of right, is for 
us the cause of humanity. It is also a fact, and an incontestable 
fact, that in the eyes of man fact is not every thing, and that the 
idea of right is a universal idea, graven in shining and inefface- 
able characters, if not in the visible world, at least in that of 
thought and the soul ; concerning that is the question ; it is also 
that which in the long run reforms and governs the other. 

Individual consciousness, conceived and transferred to the en- 
tire species, is called common sense. It is common sense that 
has made, that sustains, that develops languages, natural and per- 
manent beliefs, society and its fundamental institutions. Gram- 
marians have not invented languages, nor legislators societies, nor 
philosophers general beliefs. All these things have not been 
personally done, but by the whole world, — by the genius of hu- 
manity. 

Common sense is .deposited in its works. All languages, and 
all human institutions contain the ideas and the sentiments that 
we have just called to mind and described, and especially the 
distinction between good and evil, between justice and injustice, 
between free will and desire, between duty and interest, between 



PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE. 227 

virtue and happiness, with the profoundly rooted belief that hap- 
piness is a recompense due to virtue, and that crime in itself 
deserves to be punished, and calls for the reparation of a just 
suffering. 

These things are attested by the words and actions of men. 
Such are the sincere and impartial, but somewhat confused, some- 
what gross notions of common sense. 

Here begins the part of philosophy. It has before it two dif- 
ferent routes ; it can do one of two things : either accept the 
notions of common sense, elucidate them, thereby develop and 
increase them, and, by faithfully expressing them, fortify the nat- 
ural beliefs of humanity ; or, preoccupied with such or such a 
principle, impose it upon the natural data of common sense, ad- 
mit those that agree with this principle, artificially bend the others 
to these, or openly deny them ; this is what is called making a 
system. 

Philosophic systems are not philosophy ; they try to realize 
the idea of it, as civil institutions try to realize that of justice, as 
the arts express in their way infinite beauty, as the sciences pur- 
sue universal science. Philosophic systems are necessarily very 
imperfect, otherwise there never would have been two systems in 
the world. Fortunate are those that go on doing good, that ex- 
pand in the minds and souls of men, with some innocent errors, 
the sacred love of the true, the beautiful, and the good ! But 
philosophic systems follow their times much more than they di- 
rect them ; they receive their spirit from the hands of their age. 
Transferred to France towards the close of the regency and under 
the reign of Louis XV., the philosophy of Locke gave birth there 
to a celebrated school, which for a long time governed and still 
subsists among us, protected by ancient habits, but in radical op- 
position to our new institutions and our new wants. Sprung from 
the bosom of tempests, nourished in the cradle of a revolution, 
brought up under the bad discipline of the genius of war, the 
nineteenth century cannot recognize its image and find its instincts 
in a philosophy born under the influence of the voluptuous refine- 



228 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 

ments of Versailles, admirably fitted for the decrepitude of an 
arbitrary monarchy, but not for the laborious life of a young lib- 
erty surrounded with perils. As for us, after having combated 
the philosophy of sensation in the metaphysics which it substi- 
tuted for Cartesianism, and in the deplorable aesthetics, now too 
accredited, under which succumbed our great national art of the 
seventeenth century, we do not hesitate to combat it again in the 
ethics that were its necessary product, the ethics of interest. 

The exposition and refutation of these pretended ethics will be 
the subject of the next lecture. 



LECTUEE XII. 

THE ETHICS OF INTEKEST. 1 

Exposition of the doctrine of interest. — What there is of truth in this doc- 
trine. — Its defects. 1st, It confounds liberty and desire, and thereby 
abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the fundamental distinction be- 
tween good and evil. 3d. It cannot explain obligation and duty. 4th. 
Nor right. 5th. Nor the principle of merit and demerit. — Consequences 
of the ethics of interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to 
despotism. 

The philosophy of sensation, setting out from a single fact, 
agreeable or painful sensation, necessarily arrives in ethics at a 
single principle, — interest. The whole of the system may be 
explained as follows : 

Man is sensible to pleasure and pain : he shuns the one and 
seeks the other. That is his first instinct, and this instinct will 
never abandon him. Pleasure may change so far as its object is 
concerned, and be diversified in a thousand ways : but whatever 
form it takes, — physical pleasure, intellectual pleasure, moral 
pleasure, it is always pleasure that man pursues. 

The agreeable generalized is the useful ; and the greatest pos- 
sible sum of pleasure, whatever it may be, no longer concentrated 
within such or such an instant, but distributed over a certain ex- 
tent of duration, is happiness. 2 



1 On the ethics of interest, to this lecture may be joined those of vol. iii. 
of the 1st Series, on the doctrine of Helvetius and St. Lambert. 

2 The word ionheur, which has no exact English equivalent, which M. 
Cousin uses in his ethical discussions in the precise sense of the definition 
given above, we have sometimes translated happiness, sometimes good for- 
tune, sometimes prosperity, sometimes fortune. When one has in mind 
the thing, he will uot be troubled by the more or less exuct word that indi- 



230 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

Happiness, like pleasure, is relative to him who experiences it ; 
it is essentially personal. Ourselves, and ourselves alone we 
love, in loving pleasure and happiness. 

Interest is that which prompts us to seek in every thing our 
pleasure and our happiness. 

If happiness is the sole end of life, interest is the sole motive 
of all our actions. 

Man is only sensible to his interest, but he understands it well 
or ill. Much art is necessary in order to be happy. We are 
not ready to give ourselves up to all the pleasures that are offered 
on the highway of life, without examining whether these pleasures 
do not conceal many a pain. Present pleasure is not every 
thing, — it is necessary to take thought for the future ; it is 
necessary to know how to renounce joys that may bring regret, 
and sacrifice pleasure to happiness, that is to say, to pleasure 
still, but pleasure more enduring and less intoxicating. The 
pleasures of the body are not the only ones, — there are other 
pleasures, those of mind, even those of opinion : the sage tem- 
pers them by each other. 

The ethics of interest are nothing else than the ethics of per- 
fected pleasure, substituting happiness for pleasure, the useful 
for the agreeable, prudence for passion. It admits, like the 
human race, the words good and evil, virtue and vice, merit 
and demerit, punishment and reward, but it explains them in its 
own way. The good is that which in the eyes of reason is con- 
formed to our true interest ; evil is that which is contrarjr to our 
true interest. Virtue is that wisdom which knows how to resist 
the enticement of passions, discerns what is truly useful, and 
surely proceeds to happiness. Vice is that aberration of mind 
and character that sacrifices happiness to pleasures without du- 
ration or full of dangers. Merit and demerit, punishment and 



cates it: — all language, at best, is only symbolic; it bears the same relation 
to thought as the forms of nature do to the laws that produce and govern 
them. The true reader never mistakes the symbol for the thing symbolized, 
the shadow for the reality. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 231 

reward, are the consequences of virtue and vice : — for not know- 
ing how to seek happiness by the road of wisdom, we are pun- 
ished by not attaining it. The ethics of interest do not pretend 
to destroy any of the duties consecrated by public opinion ; it 
establishes that all are conformed to our personal interest, and it 
is thereby that they are duties. To do good to men is the surest 
means of making them do good to us ; and it is also the means 
of acquiring their esteem, their good will, and their sympathy, — 
always agreeable, and often useful. Disinterestedness itself has 
its explanation. Doubtless there is no disinterestedness in the 
vulgar sense of the word, that is to say, a real sacrifice of self, 
which is absurd, but there is the sacrifice of present interest to 
future interest, of gross and sensual passion to a nobler and more 
delicate pleasure. Sometimes one renders to himself a bad 
account of the pleasure that he pursues, and in fault of seeing 
clearly into his own heart, invents that chimera of disinterested- 
ness of which human nature is incapable, which it cannot even 
comprehend. 

It will be conceded that this explanation of the ethics, of inter- 
est is not overcharged, that it is faithful. 

We go further, — we acknowledge that these ethics are an ex- 
treme, but, up to a certain point, a legitimate reaction against 
the excessive rigor of stoical ethics, especially ascetic ethics that 
smother sensibility instead of regulating it, and, in order to save 
the soul from passions, demands of it a sacrifice of all the pas- 
sions of nature that resembles a suicide. 

Man was not made to be a sublime slave, like Epictetus, em- 
ployed in supporting bad fortune well without trying to surmount 
it, nor, like the author of the Imitation, the angelic inhabitant of 
a cloister, calling for death as a fortunate deliverance, and antici- 
pating it, as far as in him lies, by continual penitence and in 
mute adoration. The love of pleasure, even the passions, have a 
place among the needs of humanity. Suppress the passions, and 
it is true there is no more excess ; neither is there any mainspring 
of action, — without winds the vessel no longer proceeds, and soon 



232 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

sinks in the deep. Suppose a being that lacks love of self, the 
instinct of preservation, the horror of suffering, especially the 
horror of death, who has neither the love of pleasure nor the love 
of happiness, in a word, destitute of all personal interest, — such 
a being will not long resist the innumerable causes of destruction 
that surround and besiege him ; he will not remain a day. Never 
can a single family, nor the least society be formed or maintained. 
He who has made man has not confided the care of his work to 
virtue alone, to devotedness and sublime charity, — he has willed 
that the duration and development of the race and human so- 
ciety should be placed upon simpler and surer foundations ; and 
this is the reason why he has given to man the love of self, the 
instinct of preservation, the taste of pleasure and happiness, the 
passions that animate life, hope and fear, love, ambition, personal 
interest, in fine, a powerful, permanent, universal motive that 
urges us on to continually ameliorate our condition upon the 
earth. 

So we do not contest with the ethics of interest the reality of 
their principle, — we are convinced that this principle exists, that 
it has a right to be. The only question that we raise is the fol- 
lowing : — The principle of interest is true in itself, but are there 
not other principles quite as true, quite as real ? Man seeks pleas- 
ure and happiness, but are there not in him other needs, other 
sentiments, as powerful, as vital ? The first and universal prin- 
ciple of human life is the need of the individual to preserve him- 
self; but would this principle suffice to support human life and 
society entire and as we behold it ? 

Just as the existence of the body does not hinder that of the 
soul, and reciprocally, so in the ample bosom of humanity and 
the profound designs of divine Providence, the principles that 
differ most do not exclude each other. 

The philosophy of sensation continually appeals to experience. 
We also invoke experience; and it is experience that has given 
us certain facts mentioned in the preceding lecture, which consti- 
tute the primary notions of common sense. We admit the facts 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 233 

that serve as a foundation for the system of interest, and reject 
the system. The facts are true in their proper bearing, — the sys- 
tem is false in attributing to them an excessive, limitless bearing ; 
and it is false again in denying other facts quite as incontestable. 
A sound philosophy holds for its primary law to collect all real 
facts and respect the real differences that also distinguish them. 
What it pursues before all, is not unity, but truth. 1 Now the 
ethics of interest mutilate truth, — they choose among facts those 
that agree with them, and reject all the others, which are precisely 
the very facts of morality. Exclusive and intolerant, they deny 
what they do not explain, — they form a whole well united, which, 
as an artificial work, may have its merit, but is broken to pieces 
as soon as it comes to encounter human nature with its grand 
parts. 

We are about to show that the ethics of interest, an offspring 
of the philosophy of sensation, are in contradiction with a cer- 
tain number of phenomena, which human nature presents to 
whomsoever interrogates it without the spirit of system. 

1st. We have established, not in the name of a system, but in 
the name of the most common experience, that entire humanity 
believes in the existence, in each of its members, of a certain 
force, a certain power that is called liberty. Because it believes 
in liberty in the individual, it desires that this liberty should be 
respected and protected in society. Liberty is a fact that the con- 
sciousness of each of us attests to him, which, moreover, is envel- 
oped in all the moral phenomena that we have signalized, in 
moral approbation and disapprobation, in esteem and contempt, 
in admiration and indignation, in merit and demerit, in punish- 
ment and reward. We ask the philosophy of sensation and the 
ethics of interest what they do with this universal phenomena 
which all the beliefs of humanity suppose, on which entire life, 
private and public, turns. 

1 On the danger of seeking unity before all, see in the 3d Series, Frag- 
ments Philosophigves, vol. iv., our Examination of the Lectures of M. La- 
romegaxlre. 



234 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

Every system of ethics, whatever it may be, which contains, I 
do not say a rule, but a simple advice, implicitly admits liberty. 
When the ethics of interest advise a man to sacrifice the agree- 
able to the useful, it apparently admits that man is free to follow 
or not to follow this advice. But in philosophy it does not suffice 
to admit a fact, there must be the right to admit it. Now, most 
moralists of interest deny the liberty of man, and no one has the 
right to admit it in a system that derives the entire human soul, 
all its faculties as well as all its ideas, from sensation alone and 
its developments. 

When an agreeable sensation, after having charmed our soul, 
quits it and vanishes, the soul experiences a sort of suffering, a 
want, a need, — it is agitated, disquieted. This disquietude, at first 
vague and indecisive, is soon determined ; it is borne towards the 
object that has pleased us, whose absence makes us suffer. This 
movement of the soul, more or less vivid, is desire. 

Is there in desire any of the characters of liberty ? What is it 
called to be free ? Each one knows that he is free, when he 
knows that he is master of his action, that he can begin it, arrest 
it, or continue it as he pleases. We are free, when before acting 
we have taken the resolution to act, knowing well that we are 
able to take the opposite resolution. A free act is that of which, 
by the infallible testimony of my consciousness, I know that I am 
the cause, for which, therefore, I regard myself as responsible. 
God, the world, the body,. can produce in me a thousand move- 
ments ; these movements may seem to the eyes of an external 
observer to be voluntary acts ; but any error is impossible to con- 
sciousness, — it distinguishes every movement not voluntary, what- 
ever it may be, from a voluntary act. 

True activity is voluntary and free activity. Desire is just the 
opposite. Desire, carried to its culmination, is passion ; but lan- 
guage, as well as consciousness, says that man is passive in pas- 
sion ; and the more vivid passion is, the more imperative are its 
movements, the farther is it from the type of true activity in 
which the soul possesses and governs itself. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 235 

I am no more free in desire than in the sensation that precedes 
and determines it. If an agreeable object is presented to me, am 
I able not to be agreeably moved ? If it is a painful object, am 
I able not to be painfully moved ? And so, when this agreeable 
sensation has disappeared, if memory and imagination remind 
me of it, is it in my power not to suffer from no longer experi- 
encing it, is it in my power not to feel the need of experiencing 
it again, and to desire more or less ardently the object that alone 
can appease the disquietude and suffering of my soul ? 

• Observe well what takes place within you in desire ; you recog- 
nize in it a blind emotion, that, without any deliberation on your 
part, and without the intervention of your will, rises or falls, in- 
creases or diminishes. One does not desire, and cease to desire, 
according to his will. 

Will often combats desire, as it often also yields to it ; it is 
not, therefore, desire. We do not reproach the sensations that 
objects produce, nor even the desires that these sensations engen- 
der ; we do reproach ourselves for the consent of the will to these 
desires, and the acts that follow, for these acts are in our power. 

Desire is so little will, that it often abolishes it, and leads man 
into acts that he does not impute to himself, for they are not 
voluntary. It is even the refuge of many of the accused ; they 
lay their faults to the violence of desire and passion, which have 
not left them masters of themselves. 

If desire were the basis of will, the stronger the desire the freer 
we should be. Evidently the contrary is true. As the violence 
of desire increases, the dominion of man over himself decreases ; 
and as desire is weakened and passion extinguished, man repos- 
sesses himself. 

I do not say that we have no influence over our desires. That 
two facts differ, it does not follow that they must be without re- 
lation to each other. By removing certain objects, or even by 
merely diverting our thoughts away from the pleasure that they 
can give us, we are able, to a certain extent, to turn aside and 
elude the sensible effects of these objects, and escape the desire 



236 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

which they might excite in us. One may also, by surrounding 
himself with certain objects, in some sort manage himself, and 
produce in himself sensations and desires which for that are not 
more voluntary than would be the impression made upon us by 
a stone with which we should strike ourselves. By yielding to 
these desires, we lend them a new force, and we moderate them 
by a skilful resistance. One even has some power over the organs 
of the body, and, by applying to them an appropriate regimen, 
he goes so far as to modify their functions. All this proves that 
there is in us a power different from the senses and desire, which, 
without disposing of them, sometimes exercises over them an in- 
direct authority. 

"Will also directs intelligence, although it is not intelligence. 
To will and to know are two things essentially different. We do 
not judge as we will, but according to the necessary laws of the 
judgment and the understanding. The knowledge of truth is not 
a resolution of the will. It is not the will that declares, for ex- 
ample, that body is extended, that it is in space, that every phe- 
nomenon has a cause, etc. Yet the will has much power over 
intelligence. It is freely and voluntarily that we work, that we 
give attention, for a longer or a shorter time, more or less intense, 
to certain things ; consequently, it is the will that develops and 
increases intelligence, as it might let it languish and become ex- 
tinguished. It must, then, be avowed that there is in us a 
supreme power that presides over all our faculties, over intelli- 
gence as well as sensibility, which is distinguished from them, 
and is mingled with them, governs them, or leaves them to their 
natural development, making appear, even in its absence, the 
character that belongs to it, since the man that is deprived of it 
avows that he is no longer master of himself, that he is not him- 
self, so true is it that human personality resides particularly in 
that prominent power that is called the will. 1 



1 On the difference between desire, intelligence, and will, see the Exami- 
nation, already cited, of the Lectures of M. Laromcguiere. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 237 

Singular destiny of that power, so often misconceived, and yet 
so manifest! Strange confounding of will and desire, wheiein 
the most opposite schools meet each other, Spinoza, Malebranche, 
and Condillac, the philosophy of the seventeenth century, and 
that of the eighteenth ! One, a despiser of humanity, by an ex- 
treme and ill-understood piety, strips man of his own activity, in 
order to concentrate it in God ; the other transfers it to nature. 
In both man is a mere instrument, nothing else than a mode of 
God or a product of nature. When desire is once taken as the 
type of human activity, there is an end of all liberty and person- 
ality. A philosophy, less systematic, by conforming itself to facts, 
carries through common sense to better results. By distinguish- 
ing between the passive phenomenon of desire and the power of 
freely determining self, it restores the true activity that charac- 
terizes human personality. The will is the infallible sign and 
the peculiar power of a real and effective being ; for how could 
he who should be only a mode of another being find in his own 
borrowed being a power capable of willing and producing acts of 
which he should feel himself the cause, and the responsible cause ? 

If the philosophy of sensation, by setting out from passive phe- 
nomena, cannot explain true activity, voluntary and free activity, 
we might regard it as demonstrated that this same philosophy 
cannot give a true doctrine of morality, for all ethics suppose 
liberty. In order to impose rules of action on a being, it is neces- 
sary that this being should be capable of fulfilling or violating 
them. What makes the good and evil of an action is not the 
action itself, but the intention that has determined it. Before 
every equitable tribunal, the crime is in the intention, and to the 
intention the punishment is attached. Where, then, liberty is 
wanting, where there is nothing but desire and passion, not even 
a shade of morality subsists. But we do not wish to reject, by 
the previous question, the ethics of sensation. We proceed to 
examine in itself the principle that they lay down, and to show 
that from this principle can be deduced neither the idea of good 
and evil, nor any of the moral ideas that are attached to it. 



238 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

2d. According to the philosophy of sensation, the good is 
nothing else than the useful. By substituting the useful for the 
agreeable, without changing the principle, there has been con- 
trived a convenient refuge against many difficulties ; for it will 
always be possible to distinguish interest well understood from 
apparent and vulgar interest. But even under this somewhat 
refined form, the doctrine that we are examining none the less 
destroys the distinction between good and evil. 

If utility is the sole measure of the goodness of actions, I must 
consider only one thing when an action is proposed to me to do, 
— what advantages can result from it to me ? 

So I make the supposition that a friend, whose innocence is 
known to me, falls into disfavor with a king, or opinion — a mis- 
tress more jealous and imperious than all kings, — and that there 
is danger in remaining faithful to him and advantage in separa- 
ting myself from him ; if, on one side, the danger is certain, and 
on the other the advantage is infallible, it is clear that I must 
either abandon my unfortunate friend, or renounce the principle 
of interest — of interest well understood. 

But it will be said to me : — think on the uncertainty of human 
things ; remember that misfortune may also overtake you, and 
do not abandon your friend, through fear that you may one day 
be abandoned. 

I respond that, at first, it is the future that is uncertain, but 
the present is certain ; if I can reap great and unmistakable ad- 
vantages from an action, it would be absurd to sacrifice them to 
the chance of a possible misfortune. Besides, according to my 
supposition, all the chances of the future are in my favor, — this 
is the hypothesis that we have made. 

Do not speak to me of public opinion. If personal interest is 
the only rational principle, the public reason must be with me. 
If it were against me, it would be an objection against the truth 
of the principle. For how could a true principle, rationally ap- 
plied, be revolting to the public conscience ? 

Neither oppose to me remorse. What remorse can I feel for 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 239 

having followed the truth, if the principle of interest is in fact 
moral truth ? On the contrary, I should feel satisfaction on ac- 
count of it. 

The rewards and punishments of another life remain. But 
how are we to believe in another life, in a system that confines 
human consciousness within the limits of transformed sensation ? 

I have^ then, no motive to preserve fidelity to a friend. And 
mankind nevertheless imposes on me this fidelity ; and, if I am 
wanting in it, I am dishonored. 

If happiness is the highest aim, good and evil a.re not in the act 
itself, but in its happy or unhappy results. 

Fontenelle seeing a man led to punishment, said, "There is a 
man who has calculated badly." Whence it follows that, if this 
man, in doing what he did, could have escaped punishment, he 
w r ould have calculated well, and his conduct would have been 
laudable. The action then becomes good or ill according to the 
issue. Every act is of itself indifferent, and it is lot that quali- 
fies it. 

If the honest is only the useful, the genius of calculation is the 
highest wisdom ; it is even virtue ! 

But this genius is not within the reach of everybody. It sup- 
poses, with long experience of life, a sure insight, capable of 
discerning all the consequences of actions, a head strong and 
large enough to embrace and weigh their different chances. The 
young man, the ignorant, the poor in mind, are not able to dis- 
tinguish between the good and the evil, the honest and the dishon- 
est. And even in supposing the most consummate prudence, 
what place remains, in the profound obscurity of human things, 
for chance and the unforeseen ! In truth, in the system of inter- 
est well understood, there must be great knowledge in order to 
be an honest man. Much less is requisite for ordinary virtue, 
whose motto has always been : Do what you ought, let come 
what may. 1 But- this principle is precisely the opposite of the 

1 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 193: "la the doctrine of interest, every man seeks 
the useful, but he is not sure of attaining it. He may, by dint of prudence 



240 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

principle of interest. It is necessary to choose between them. If 
interest is the only principle avowed by reason, disinterestedness 
is a lie and madness, and literally an incomprehensible monster 
in well-ordered human nature. 

Nevertheless humanity speaks of disinterestedness, and thereby 
it does not simply mean that wise selfishness that deprives itself 
of a pleasure for a surer, more delicate, or more durable pleasure. 
No one has ever believed that it was the nature or the degree of 
the pleasure sought that constituted disinterestedness. This name 
is awarded only to the sacrifice of an interest, whatever it may 
be, to a motive free from all interest. And the human race, not 
only thus understands disinterestedness, but it believes that 
such a disinterestedness exists ; it believes the human soul capa- 
ble of it. It admires the devotedness of Regulus, because it does 
not see what interest could have impelled that great man to go 
far from his country to seek, among cruel enemies, a frightful 
death, when he might have lived tranquil and even honored in 
the midst of his family and his fellow-citizens. 

But glory, it will be said, the passion of glory inspired Regu- 
lus ; it is, then, interest still that explains the apparent heroism 

and profound combinations,^ncrease in his favor the chances of success ; it 
is impossible that there should not remain some chances against liim ; he 
never pursues, then, any thing but a probable result. On the contrary, in 
the doctrine of duty, I am always sure of obtaining the last end that I pro- 
pose to myself, moral good. I risk my life to save my fellow ; if, through 
mischance, I miss this end, there is another which does not, which cannot, 
escape me, — I have aimed at the good, I have been successful. Moral good, 
being especially in the virtuous intention, is always in my power and within 
my reach ; as to the material good that can result from the action itself, 
Providence alone disposes of it. Let us felicitate ourselves that Providence 
has placed our moral destiny in our own hands, by making it depend upon 
the good and not upon the useful. The will, in order to act in the sad trials 
of life, has need of being sustained by certainty. Who would be disposed 
to give his blood for an uncertain end? Success is a complicated problem, 
that, in order to be solved, exacts all the power of the calculus of probabili- 
ties. What labor and what uncertainties does such a calculus involve ! 
Doubt is a very sad preparation for action. But when one proposes before 
all to do his duty, he acts without any perplexity. Do what you ought, let 
come what may, is a motto that does not deceive. With such an end, we 
arc sure of never pursuing it in vain." 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 241 

of the old Roman. Admit, then, that this manner of understand- 
ing his interest is even ridiculously absurd, and that heroes are. 
very unskilful and inconsistent egoists. Instead of erecting stat- 
ues, with the deceived human race, to Regulus, d'Assas, and St. 
Vincent de Paul, true philosophy must send them to the Petites- 
Maisons, that a good regime may cure them of generosity, charity, 
and greatness of soul, and restore them to the sane state, the nor- 
mal state, the state in which man only thinks of himself, and 
knows no other law, no other principle of action than his interest. 

3d. If there is no liberty, if there is no essential distinction 
between good and evil, if there is only interest well or ill under- 
stood, there can be no obligation. 

It is at first very evident that obligation supposes a being ca- 
pable of fulfilling it, that duty is applied only to a free being. 
Then the nature of obligation is such, that if we are delinquent 
in fulfilling it, we feel ourselves culpable, whilst if, instead of under- 
standing our interest well, we have understood it ill, there follows 
only a single thing, that we are unfortunate. Are, then, being cul- 
pable and being unfortunate the same thing ? These are two ideas 
radically different. You may advise me to understand my interest 
well, under penalty of falling into misfortune ; you cannot command 
me to see clearly in regard to my interest under penalty of crime. 

Imprudence has never been considered a crime. When it is 
morally accused, it is much less as being wrong than as attesting 
vices of the soul, lightness, presumption, feebleness. 

As we have said, our true interest is often most difficult of 
discernment. Obligation is always immediate and manifest. In 
vain passion and desire combat it ; in vain the reasoning that 
passion trains for its attendance, like a docile slave, tries to 
smother it under a mass of sophisms : the instinct of conscience, 
a cry of the soul, an intuition of reason, different from reasoning, 
is sufficient to repel all sophisms, and make obligation appear. 

However pressing may be the solicitations of interest, we may 
always enter into contest and arrangement with it. There are a 
thousand ways of being happy. You assure me that, by con- 

11 



242 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

ducting myself in such a manner, I shall arrive at fortune. Yes, 
but I love repose more than fortune, and with happiness alone 
in view, activity is not better than sloth. Nothing is more diffi- 
cult than to advise any one in regard to his interest, nothing is 
easier than to advise him in regard to honor. 

After all, in practice, the useful is resolved into the agreeable, 
that is to say, into pleasure. Now, in regard to pleasure, every 
thing depends on humor and temperament. When there is 
neither good nor evil in itself, there are no pleasures more or 
less noble, more or less elevated ; there are only pleasures that 
are more or less agreeable to us. Every thing depends on the 
nature of each one. This is the reason why interest is so capri- 
cious. Each one understands it as it pleases him, because each 
one is the judge of what pleases him. One is more moved by 
pleasures of the senses ; another by pleasures of mind and 
heart. To the latter, the passion of glory takes the place of 
pleasures of the senses ; to the former, the pleasure of dominion 
appears much superior to that of glory. Each man has his own 
passions, each man, then, has his own way of understanding his 
interest ; and even my interest of to-day is not my interest of to- 
morrow. The revolutions of health, age, and. events greatly 
modify our tastes, our humors. We are ourselves perpetually 
changing, and with us change our desires and our interests. 

It is not so with obligation. It exists not, or it is absolute. 
The idea of obligation implies that of something inflexible. That 
alone is a duty from which one cannot be loosed under any pre- 
text, and is, by the same title, a duty for all. There is one 
■thing before which all the caprices of my mind, of my imagina- 
tion, of my sensibility must disappear, — the idea of the good 
with the obligation which it involves. To this supreme com- 
mand I can oppose neither my humor, nor circumstances, nor 
even difficulties. This law admits of no delay, no accommoda- 
tion, no excuse. When it speaks, be it to you or me, in what- 
ever place, under whatever circumstance, in whatever disposition 
we may be, it only remains for us to obey. We are able not to 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 243 

obey, for we are free ; but every disobedience to the law appears 
to ourselves a fault more or less grave, a bad use of our liberty. 
And the violated law has its immediate penal sanction in the 
remorse that it inflicts upon us. 

The only penalty that is brought upon us by the counsels of 
prudence, comprehended more or less well, followed more or less 
well, is, in the final account, more or less happiness or unhappi- 
ness. Now I pray you, am I obligated to be happy ? Can 
obligation depend upon happiness, that is to say, on a thing that 
it is equally impossible for me to always seek and obtain at will ? 
If I am obligated, it must be in my power to fulfil the obligation 
imposed. But my liberty has but little power over my happi- 
ness, which depends upon a thousand circumstances independent 
of me, whilst it is all in all' in regard to virtue, for virtue is only 
an employment of liberty. Moreover, happiness is in itself, 
morally, neither better nor worse than unhappiness. If I under- 
stand my interest badly, I am punished for it by regret, not by 
remorse. Unhappiness can overwhelm me ; it does not disgrace 
me, if it is not the consequence of some vice of the soul. 

Not that I would renew stoicism and say to suffering, Thou 
art no evil. No, I earnestly advise man to escape suffering as 
much as he can, to understand well his interest, to shun unhap- 
piness and seek happiness. I only wish to establish that happi- 
ness is one thing and virtue another, that man necessarily aspires 
after happiness, but that he is only obligated to virtue, and that 
consequently, by the side of and above interest well understood 
is a moral law, that is to say, as consciousness attests, and the 
whole human race avows, an imperative prescription of which 
one cannot voluntarily divest himself without crime and shame. 

4th. If interest does not account for the idea of duty, by a 
necessary consequence, it does not more account for that of 
right ; for duty and right reciprocally suppose each other. 

Might and right must not be confounded. A being might 
have immense power, that of the whirlwind, of the thunderbolt, 
that of one of the forces of nature ; if liberty is not joined to it, 



244 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

it is only a fearful and terrible thing, it is not a person, — it may 
inspire, in the highest degree, fear and hope, — it has no right to 
respect ; one has no duties towards it. 

Duty and right are brothers. Their common mother is liberty. 

They are born at the same time, are developed and perish 
together. It might even be said that duty and right make one, 
and are the same being, having a face on two different sides. 
What, in fact, is my right to your respect, except the duty you 
have to respect me, because I am a free being ? But you are 
yourself a free being, and the foundation of my right and your 
duty becomes for you the foundation of an equal right, and in 
me of an equal duty. 1 

I say equal with the exactest equality, for liberty, and liberty 
alone, is equal to itself. All the rest is diverse ; by all the rest 
men differ; for resemblance implies difference. As there are 
no two leaves that are the same, there are no two men absolutely 
the same in body, senses, mind, heart. But it is impossible to 
conceive of difference between the free will of one man and the 
free will of another. I am free or I am not free. If I am free, 
I am free as much as you, and you are as much as I. There is 
not in this more or less. One is a moral person as much as, and 
by the same title as another moral person. Volition, which is 
the seat of liberty, is the same in all men. It may have in its 
service different instruments, powers different, and consequently 
unequal, whether material or spiritual. But the powers of which 
will disposes are not it, 2 for it does not dispose of them in an 
absolute manner. The only free power is that of will, but that 
is essentially so. If will recognizes laws, these laws are not 
motives, springs that move it, — they are ideal laws, that of jus- 
tice, for example ; will recognizes this law, and at the same time 
it has the consciousness of the ability to fulfil it or to break it, 
doing the one only with the consciousness of the ability to do the 



1 Sec the development of the idea of right, lectures 14 and 15. 
8 Sec lecture 14, Theory of liberty. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 245 

other, and reciprocally. Therein is the type of liberty, and at 
the same time of true equality ; every thing else is false. It is 
not true that men have the right to be equally rich, beautiful, 
robust, to enjoy equally, in a word, to be equally fortunate ; for 
they originally and necessarily differ in all those points of their 
nature that correspond to pleasure, to riches, to good fortune. 
God has made us with powers unequal in regard to all these 
things. Here equality is against nature and eternal order ; for 
diversity and difference, as well as harmony, are the law of cre- 
ation. To dream of such an equality is a strange mistake, a 
deplorable error. False equality is the idol of ill-formed minds 
and hearts, of disquiet and ambitious egoism. True equality 
accepts without shame all the exterior inequalities that God has 
made, and that it is not in the power of man not only to efface, 
but even to modify. Noble liberty has nothing to settle with 
the furies of pride and envy. As it does not aspire to domina- 
tion, so, and by virtue of the same principle, it does not more 
aspire to a chimerical equality of mind, of beauty, of fortune, of 
enjoyments. Moreover, such an equality, were it possible, would 
be of little value in its own eyes ; it asks something much greater 
than pleasure, fortune, rank, to wit, respect. Respect, an equal 
respect of the sacred right of being free in every thing that consti- 
tutes the person, that person which is truly man ; this is what lib- 
erty and with it true equality claim, or rather imperatively demand. 
Respect must not be confounded with homage. I render homage 
to genius and beauty. I respect humanity alone, and by that I 
mean all free natures, for every thing that is not free in man is 
foreign to him. Man is therefore the equal of man precisely in 
every thing that makes him man, and the reign of true equality 
exacts on the part of all only the same respect for what each 
one possesses equally in himself, both young and old, both ugly 
and beautiful, both rich and poor, both the man of genius and 
the mediocre man, both woman and man, whatever has conscious- 
ness of being a person and not a thing. The equal respect of 
common liberty is the principle at once of duty and right ; it is 



246 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

the virtue of each and the security of all ; by an admirable 
agreement, it is dignity among men, and accordingly peace on 
earth. Such is the great and holy image of liberty and equality, 
which has made the hearts of our fathers beat, and the hearts of 
all virtuous and enlightened men, of all true friends of humanity. 
Such is the ideal that true philosophy pursues across the ages, 
from the generous dreams of Plato to the solid conceptions of 
Montesquieu, from the first free legislation of the smallest city of 
Greece to our declaration of rights, and the immortal works of 
the constituent Assembly. 

The philosophy of sensation starts with a principle that con- 
demns it to consequences as disastrous as those of the principle 
of liberty are beneficent. By confounding will with desire, it 
justifies passion, which is desire in all its force — passion, which is 
precisely the opposite of liberty. It accordingly unchains all the 
desires and all the passions, it gives full rein to imagination and 
the heart ; it renders each man much less happy on account of 
what he possesses, than miserable on account of what he lacks ; 
it makes him regard his neighbors with an eye of envy and con- 
tempt, and continually pushes society towards anarchy or tyranny. 
Whither, in fact, would you have interest lead in the train of de- 
sire ? My desire is certainly to be the most fortunate possible. 
My interest is to seek to be so by all means, whatever they may 
be, under the single reserve that they be not contrary to their 
end. If I am born the first of men, the richest, the most beauti- 
ful, the most powerful, etc., I shall do every thing to preserve the 
advantages I have received. If fate has given me birth in a rank 
little elevated, with a moderate fortune, limited talents, and im- 
mense desires — for it cannot too often be repeated, desire of every 
kind aspires after the infinite — I shall do every thing to rise above 
the crowd, in order to increase my power, my fortune, my joys. 
Unfortunate on account of my position in this world, in order to 
change it, I dream of, and call for revolutions, it is true, without 
enthusiasm and political fanaticism, for interest alone does not 
produce these noble follies, but under the sharp goad of vanity 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 247 

and ambition. Thereby, then, I arrive at fortune and power ; 
interest, then, claims security, as before it invoked agitation. The 
need of security brings me back from anarchy to the need of 
order, provided order be to my profit ; and I become a tyrant, if 
I can, or the gilt servant of a tyrant. Against anarchy and tyran- 
ny, those two scourges of liberty, the only rampart is the universal 
sentiment of right, founded on the firm distinction between good 
and evil, the just and the useful, the honest and the agreeable, 
virtue and interest, will and desire, sensation and conscience. 

5. Let us again signalize one of the necessary consequences of 
the doctrine of interest. 

A free being, in possession of the sacred rule of justice, cannot 
violate it, knowing that he should and may follow it, without 
immediately recognizing that he merits punishment. The idea 
of punishment is not an artificial idea, borrowed from the pro- 
found calculations of legislators ; legislations rest upon the natural 
idea of punishment. This idea, corresponding to that of liberty 
and justice, is necessarily wanting where the former two do not 
exist. Does he who obeys, and fatally obeys his desires, by the 
attraction of pleasure and happiness, supposing that, without any 
other motive than that of interest, he does an act conformed, ex- 
ternally at least, to the rule of justice, merit any thing by doing 
such an action ? Xot the least in the world. Conscience at- 
tributes to him no merit, and do one owes him thanks or recom- 
pense, for he only thinks of himself. On the other hand, if he 
injures others in wishing to serve himself, he does not feel culpa- 
ble, and no one can say to him that he has merited punishment. 
A free being who wills what he does, who has a law, and can 
conform to it, or break it, is alone responsible for his acts. But 
what responsibility can there be in the absence of liberty and a 
recognized and accepted rule of justice ? The man of sensation 
and desire tends to his own good under the law of interest, as 
the stone is drawn towards the centre of the earth under the law 
of gravitation, as the needle points to the pole. Man may err in 
the pursuit of his interest. In this case, what is to be done? 



248 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

As it seems, to put him again in the right way. Instead of that, 
he is punished. And for what, I pray you ? For being deceived. 
But error merits advice, not punishment. Punishment has, in 
the system of interest, no more the sanction of moral sense than 
recompense. Punishment is only an act of personal defence on 
the part of society ; it is an example which it gives, in order to 
inspire a salutary terror. These motives are excellent, if it be 
added that this punishment is just in itself, that it is merited, and 
that it is legitimately applied to the action committed. Omit 
that, and the other motives lose their authority, and there remains 
only an exercise of force, destitute of all morality. Then the cul- 
prit is not punished ; he is smitten, or even put to death, as the 
animal that injures instead of serving is put to death without 
scruple. The condemned does not bow his head to the whole- 
some reparation due to justice, but to the weight of irons or the 
stroke of the axe. The chastisement is not a legitimate satisfac- 
tion, an expiation which, comprehended by the culprit, reconciles 
him in his own eyes with the order that he has violated. It is a 
storm that he could not escape; it is the thunder-bolt that falls 
upon him ; it is a force more powerful than his own, which com- 
passes and overthrows him. The appearance of public chastise- 
ments acts, without doubt, upon the imagination of peoples ; but 
it does not enlighten their reason and speak to their conscience ; 
it intimidates them, perhaps ; it does not soften them. So recom- 
pense is only an additional attraction, added to all the others. 
As, properly speaking, there is no merit, recompense is simply an 
advantage that one desires, that is striven for and obtained with- 
out attaching to it any moral idea. Thus is degraded and 
effaced the great institution, natural and divine, of the recom- 
pense of virtue by happiness, and of reparation for a fault by pro- 
portionate suffering. 1 

We may then draw the conclusion, without fear of its being 
contradicted either by analysis or dialectics, that the doctrine of 

1 See the preceding lecture, and lect ires 14 and 15. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 249 

interest is incompatible with the most certain facts, with the 
strongest convictions of humanity. Let us add, that this doctrine 
is not less incompatible with the hope of another world, where 
the principle of justice will be better realized than in this. 

I will not seek whether the sensualistic metaphysics can arrive 
at an infinite being, author of the universe and man. I am well 
persuaded that it cannot. For every proof of the existence of 
God supposes in the human mind principles of which sensation 
renders no account, — for example, the universal and necessary 
principle of causality, without which I should have no need of 
seeking, no power of finding the cause of whatever exists. 1 All 
that I wish to establish here is, that in the system of interest, 
man, not possessing any truly moral attribute, has no right to 
put in God that of which he finds no trace either in the world or 
in himself. The God of the ethics of interest must be analogous 
to the man of these same ethics. How could they attribute to 
him the justice and the love — I mean disinterested love — of which 
they cannot have the least idea ? The God that they can admit 
loves himself, and loves only himself. And reciprocally, not con- 
sidering him as the supreme principle of charity and justice, we 
can neither love nor honor him, and the only worship that we 
can render him, is that of the fear with which his omnipotence 
inspires us^ 

What holy hope could we then found upon such a God ? And 
we who have some time grovelled upon this earth, thinking only 
of ourselves, seeking only pleasure and a pitiable happiness, what 
sufferings nobly borne for justice, what generous efforts to main- 
tain and develop the dignity of our soul, what virtuous affections 
for other souls, can we offer to the Father of humanity as titles 
to his merciful justice ? The principle that most persuades the 
human race of the immortality of the soul is still the necessary 
principle of merit and demerit, which, not finding here below its 
exact satisfaction, and yet under the necessity of finding it, in- 



3 1st part, lecture 1. 
11* 



250 LECTURE TWELFTH. 

spires us to call upon God for its satisfaction, who has not put in 
our hearts the law of justice to violate it himself in regard to us. 1 
Now, we have just seen that the ethics of interest destroy the 
principle of merit and demerit, both in this world, and above all, 
in the world to come. Accordingly, there is no regard beyond 
this world, — no recourse to an all-powerful judge, wholly just and 
wholly good, against the sports of fortune and the imperfections 
of human justice. Every thing is completed for man between 
birth and death, in spite of the instincts and presentiments of his 
heart, and even the principles of his reason. 

The disciples of Helvetius will, perhaps, claim the glory of 
having freed humanity from the fears and hopes that turn it aside 
from its true interests. It is a service which mankind will appre- 
ciate. But since they confine our whole destiny to this world, 
let us demand of them what lot so worthy of envy they have in 
reserve for us here, what social order they charge with our good 
fortune, what politics, in fine, are derived from their ethics. 2 

You already know. We have demonstrated that the philoso- 
phy of sensation knows neither true liberty nor true right. What, 
in fact, is will for this philosophy ? It is desire. What, then, is 
right ? The power of satisfying desires. On this score, man is 
not free, and right is might. 

Once more, nothing pertains less to man than desire. Desire 
comes of need which man does not make, which he submits to. 
He submits in the same way to desire. To reduce will to desire 
is to annihilate liberty ; it is worse still, it is to put it where it is 
not ; it is to create a mendacious liberty that becomes an instru- 
ment of crime and misery. To call man to such a liberty is to 
open his soul to infinite desires, which it is impossible for him to 
satisfy. Desire is in its nature without limits, and our power is 
very limited. If we were alone in this world, we should even 

1 See lecture 1G. 

2 On the politics that are derived from the philosophy of sensation, see the 
four lectures that we devoted to the exposition and refutation of the doctrine 
of Hobbes, vol. iii. of the 1st Series. 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 251 

then be much troubled to satisfy our desires. But we press 
against each other with immense desires, and limited, diverse, and 
unequal powers. When right is the force that is in each of us, 
equality of rights is a chimera, — all rights are unequal, since all 
forces are unequal and can never cease to be so. It is, therefore, 
necessary to renounce equality as well as liberty ; or if one invents 
a false equality as well as a false liberty, he puts humanity in 
pursuit of a phantom. 

Such are the social elements that the ethics of interest give to 
politics. From such elements I defy all the politics of the school 
of sensation and interest to produce a single day of liberty and 
happiness for the human race. 

"When right is might, the natural state of men among them- 
selves, is war. All desiring the same things, they are all neces- 
sarily enemies ; and in this war, woe to the feeble, to the feeble 
in body and the feeble in mind ! The stronger are the masters 
by perfect right. Since right is might, the feeble may com- 
plain of nature that has not made them strong, and not com- 
plain of the strong man who uses his right in oppressing 
them. The feeble then call deception to their aid; and it is 
in this strife between cunning and force that humanity combats 
with itself. 

Yes, if there are only needs, desires, passions, interests, with 
different forces pitted against each other, war, a war sometimes 
declared and bloody, sometimes silent and full of meannesses, 
is in the nature of things. No social art can change this na- 
ture, — it may be more or less covered ; it always reappears, 
overcomes and rends the veil with which a mendacious lee-isla- 
tion envelops it. Dream, then, of liberty for beings that are 
not free, of equality between beings that are essentially dif- 
ferent, of respect for rights where there is no right, and of the 
establishment of justice on an indestructible foundation of in- 
imical passions ! From such a foundation can spring only end- 
less troubles or oppression, or rather all these evils together in a 
necessary circle. 



252 LECTURE TWELFm. 

This fatal circle can be broken only by the aid of principles 
which all the metamorphoses of sensation do not engender, and 
for which interest cannot account, which none the less subsist to 
the honor and for the safety of humanity. These principles are 
those that time has little by little drawn from Christianity in 
order to give them for the guidance of modern societies. You 
will find them written in the glorious declaration of rights that for- 
ever broke the monarchy of Louis XV., and prepared the consti- 
tutional monarchy. They are in the charter that governs us, in 
our laws, in our institutions, in our manners, in the air that we 
breathe. They serve at once as foundations for our society and 
the new philosophy necessary to a new order. 1 

Perhaps you will ask me how, in the eighteenth century, so 
many distinguished, so many honest souls could let themselves be 
seduced by a system that must have been revolting to all their 
sentiments. I will answer by reminding you that the eighteenth 
eentury was an immoderate reaction against the faults into which 
had sadly fallen the old age of a great century and a great king, 
that is to say, the revocation of the edict of Nantes, the persecu- 
tion of all free and elevated philosophy, a narrow and suspicious 
devotion, and intolerance, with its usual companion, hypocrisy. 
These excesses must have produced opposite excesses. Mme. de 
Maintenon opened the route to Mme. de Pompadour. After the 
mode of • devotion comes that of license; it takes every thing by 
storm. It descends from the court to the nobility, to the clergy 
even, and accordingly to the people. It carried away the best 



1 These words sufficiently mark the generous epoch in which we pronounce 
them, without wounding the authority and the applauses of a noble youth, 
when M. de Chateaubriand covered the Restoration with his own glory, 
when M. Royer-Collard presided over public instruction, M. Pasquier, M. 
Laine, M. de Serre over justice and the interior, Marshal St. Cyr over war, 
and the Duke de Richelieu over foreign affairs, when the Duke de Broglie 
prepared the true legislation of the press, and M. Decazes, the author of the 
wise and courageous ordinance of September 5, 1816, was at the head of 
the councils of the crown ; when finally, Louis XVIII. separated himself, 
like Henry IV., from his oldest servants in order to be the king of the whole 
uation." 



THE ETHICS OF INTEREST. 253 

spirits, even genius itself. It put a foreign philosophy in the place 
of the national philosophy, culpable, persecuted as it had been, 
for not being irreconcilable with Christianity. A disciple of 
Locke, whom Locke had discarded, Condillac, took the place of 
Descartes, as the author of Canditfe and la Pucellehad taken the 
place of Corneille and Bossuet, as Boucher and Vanloo had taken 
the place of Lesueur and Poussin. The ethics of pleasure and 
interest were the necessary ethics of that epoch. It must not be 
supposed from this that all souls were corrupt. Men, says M. 
Royer-Collard, are neither as good nor as bad as their principles. 1 
No stoic has been as austere as stoicism, no epicurean as enerva- 
ted as epicureanism. Human weakness practically baffles virtuous 
theories ; in return, thank God, the iustinct of the heart condemns 
to inconsistency the honest man who errs in bad theories. Ac- 
cordingly, in the eighteenth century, the most generous and most 
disinterested sentiments often shone forth under the reign of the 
philosophy of sensation and the ethics of interest. But it is none 
the less true, that the philosophy of sensation is false, and the 
ethics of interest destructive of all morality. 

I should perhaps make an apology for so long a lecture ; but 
it was necessary to combat seriously a doctrine of morality radi- 
cally incompatible with that which I would make penetrate your 
minds and your souls. It was especially necessary for me to strip 
the ethics of interest of that false appearance of liberty which 
they usurp in vain. I maintain, on the contrary, that they are 
the ethics of slaves, and send them back to the time when they 
ruled. Now, the principle of interest being destroyed, I propose 
to examine other principles also, less false without doubt, but still 



1 (Envres de Reid, vol. iv., p. 297 : " Men are neither as good nor as bad as 
their principles ; and, as there is no skeptic in the street, so I am sure there 
is no disinterested spectator of human actions who is not compelled to dis- 
cern them as just and unjust. Skepticism has no light that does not pale 
before the splendor of that vivid internal light that lightens the objects 
of moral perception, as the light of day lightens the objects of sensible 
perception." 



254 LECTUKE TWELFTH. 

defective, exclusive, and incomplete, upon which celebrated sys- 
tems have pretended to found ethics. I will successively combat 
these principles taken in themselves, and will then bring them 
together, reduced to their just value, in a theory large enough to 
contain all the true elements of morality, in order to express faith- 
fully common sense and entire human consciousness. 



LECTUKE XIII 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRCsCIPLES. 



The ethics of sentiment. — The ethics founded on the principle of the interest 
of the greatest number. — The ethics founded on the will of God alone. — 
The ethics founded on the punishments and rewards of another life. 

Against the ethics of interest, all generous souls take refuge 
in the ethics of sentiment. The following are some of the facts 
on which these ethics are supported, and by which they seem to 
be authorized. 

When we have done a good action, is it not certain that we 
experience a pleasure of a certain nature, which is to us the re- 
ward of this action ? This pleasure does not come from the 
senses — it has neither its principle nor its measure in an impres- 
sion made upon our organs. Neither is it confounded with the 
joy of satisfied personal interest, — we are not moved in the same 
manner, in thinking that we have succeeded, and in thinking that 
we have been honest. The pleasure attached to the testimony 
of a good conscience is pure ; other pleasures are much alloyed. 
It is durable, whilst the others quickly pass away. Finally, it is 
always within our reach. Even in the midst of misfortune, man 
bears in himself a permanent source of exquisite joys, for he 
always has the power of doing right, whilst success, dependent 
upon a thousand circumstances of which we are not the masters, 
can give only an occasional and precarious pleasure. 

As virtue has its joys, so crime has its pains. The suffering 
that follows a fault is the just recompense for the pleasure that 
we have found in it, and is often born with it. It poisons culpa- 



256 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

ble joys and the successes that are not legitimate. It wounds, 
rends, bites, thus to speak, and thereby receives its name. 1 To'-» 
be man, is sufficient to understand this suffering, — it is remorse. 

Here are other facts equally incontestable : 

I perceive a man whose face bears the marks of distress and 
misery. There is nothing in this that reaches and injures me ; 
nevertheless, without reflection or calculation, the sight alone of 
this suffering man makes me surfer. This sentiment is pity, com- 
passion, whose general principle is sympathy. 

The sadness of one of my fellow-men inspires me with sadness, 
and a glad face disposes me to joy : 

Ut ridentibuB arrident, ita flentibus adflent 
Humani vultus. 

The joy of others has an echo in our souls, and their sufferings, 
even their physical sufferings, communicate themselves to us 
almost physically. Not as exaggerated as it has been supposed 
was that expression of Mme. de Sevigne to her sick daughter : I 
have a pain in your breast. 

Our soul feels the need of putting itself in unison, and, as it 
were, in equilibrium with that of others. Hence those electric 
movements, thus to speak, that run through large assemblies. 
One receives the counter-stroke of the sentiments of his neigh- 
bors, — admiration and enthusiasm are contagious, as well as 
pleasantry and ridicule. Hence again the sentiment with which 
the author of a virtuous action inspires us. We feel a pleasure 
analogous to that which he feels himself. But are we witnesses 
of a bad action ? our souls refuse to participate in the sentiments 
that animate the culpable man, — they have for him a true aver- 
sion, what is called antipathy. 

We do not forget a third order of facts that pertain to the 
preceding, but differ from them. 

We not only sympathize with the author of a virtuous action, 

1 Mcrdre— to bite, is the main root ofremords — remorse. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 257 

we wish him well, we voluntarily do good to him, in a certain 
degree we love him. This love goes as far as enthusiasm when 
it has for its object a sublime act and a hero. This is the prin- 
ciple of the homages, of the honors that humanity renders to 
great men. And this sentiment does not pertain solely to others, 
— we apply it to ourselves by a sort of return that is not egoism. 
Yes, it may be said that we love ourselves when we have done 
well. The sentiment that others owe us, if they are just, we 
accord to ourselves, — that sentiment is benevolence. 

On the contrary, do we witness a bad action ? We expe- 
rience for the author of this action antipathy ; moreover we 
wish him evil, — we desire that he should suffer for the fault that 
he has committed, and in proportion to the gravity of the fault. 
For this reason great culprits are odious to us, if they do not 
compensate for their crimes by deep remorse, or by great virtues 
mingled with their crimes. This sentiment is not malevolence. 
Malevolence is a personal and interested sentiment, which makes 
us wish evil to others, because they are an obstacle to us. Ha- 
tred does not ask whether such a man is virtuous or vicious, but 
whether he obstructs us, surpasses us, or injures us. The senti- 
ment of which we are speaking is a sort of hatred, but a generous 
hatred that neither springs from interest nor envy, but from a 
shocked conscience. It is turned against us when we do evil, as 
well as against others. 

Moral satisfaction is not sympathy, neither is sympathy, to 
speak rigorously, benevolence. But these three phenomena 
have the common character of all being sentiments. They give 
birth to three different and analogous systems of ethics. 

According to certain philosophers, a good action is that which 
is followed by moral satisfaction, a bad action is that which is 
followed by remorse. The good or bad character of an action is 
at first attested to us by the sentiment that accompanies it. Then, 
this sentiment, with its moral signification, we attribute to other 
men ; for we judge that they do as we do, that in presence of the 
same actions thev feel the same sentiments. 



LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

Other philosophers have assigned the same part to sympathy 
or benevolence. 

For these the sign and measure of the good is in the senti- 
ments of affection and benevolence which we feel for a moral 
agent. Does a man excite in us by such or such an action a 
more or less vivid disposition to wish him well, a desire to see 
and even make him happy ? we may say that this action is good. 
If, by a series of actions of the same kind, he makes this dispo- 
sition and this desire permanent in us, we judge that he is a vir- 
tuous man. Does he excite an opposite desire, an opposite 
disposition ? he appears to us a dishonest man. 

For the former, the good is that with which we naturally 
sympathize. Has a man devoted himself to death through love 
for his country ? this heroic action awakens in us, in a certain 
degree, the same sentiments that inspired him. Bad passions 
are not thus echoed in our hearts, unless they find us already 
very corrupt, and have interest for their accomplice ; but even 
then there is something in us that revolts against these passions, 
and in the most depraved soul subsists a concealed sentiment of 
sympathy for the good, and antipathy for the evil. 

Tbtse different systems may be reduced to a single one, which 
is called the ethics of sentiment. 

It is not difficult to show the difference which separates these 
ethics from those of egoism. Egoism is the exclusive love of 
self, is the thoughtful and permanent search for our own pleas- 
ure and our own well-being. 

What is there more opposed to interest than benevolence ? 
In benevolence, far from wishing others well by reason of our 
interest, we will voluntarily risk something, we will make some 
sacrifice in order to serve an honest man who has gained our 
heart. If even in this sacrifice the soul feels a pleasure, this 
pleasure is only the involuntary accompaniment of sentiment, it 
is not the end proposed, — we feel it without having sought it. 
It is, indeed, permitted the soul to taste this pleasure, for it is 
.nature herself that attaches it to benevolence. 



OTHEK DEFECTIVE PEIN-CrPLES. 259 

Sympathy, like benevolence, is related to another than our- 
selves, — our interest is not its starting-point. The soul is so 
constituted that it is capable of suffering on account of the suf- 
ferings of an enemy. That a man does a noble action, although 
it opposes our interests, awakens in us a certain sympathy for 
that action and its author. 

The attempt has been made to explain the compassion with 
which the suffering of one of our fellow-men inspires us by the 
fear that we have of feeling it in our turn. But the unhappiness 
for which we feel compassion, is often so far from us and threatens 
us so little, that it would be absurd to fear it. Doubtless, that 
sympathy may have existence it is necessary to experience suf- 
fering, — non ignara mail. For how do you suppose that I can 
be sensible to evils of which I form to myself no idea ? But 
that is only the condition of sympathy. It is not at all necessary 
to conclude that it is only a remembrance of our own ills or the 
fear of ills to come. 

No recurrence to ourselves can account for sympathy. In the 
first place, it is involuntary, like antipathy. Then it cannot be 
supposed that we sympathize with any one in order to win his 
benevolence ; for he who is its object often knows not what we 
feel. What benevolence are we seeking, when we sympathize 
with men that we have never seen, that we never shall see, with 
men that are no more ? 

Egoism admits all pleasures ; it repels none ; it may, if it is 
enlightened, if it has become delicate and refined, recommend, 
as more durable and less alloyed, the pleasures of sentiment. 
The ethics of sentiment would then be confounded with those of 
egoism, if they should prescribe obedience to sentiment for the 
pleasure that we find in it. There would, then, be no disinter- 
estedness in it, — the individual would be the centre and sole 
end of all his actions. But such is not the case. The charm of 
the pleasures of conscience comes from the very fact that we 
are forgetful of self in the action that has produced them. So 
if nature has joined to sympathy and benevolence a true enjoy- 



LECTUEE THIRTEENTH. 

ment, it is on condition that these sentiments remain as they are, 
pure and disinterested ; you must only think of the object of 
your sympathy and benevolence in order that benevolence and 
sympathy may receive their recompense in the pleasure which 
they give. Otherwise, this pleasure no longer has its reason for 
existence, and it is wanting as soon as it sought for itself. ~No 
metamorphose of interest can produce a pleasure attached to 
disinterestedness alone. 

The ethics of egoism are only a perpetual falsehood, — they 
preserve the names consecrated by ethics, but they abolish ethics 
themselves ; they deceive humanity by speaking to humanity its 
own language, concealing under this borrowed language a radi- 
cal opposition to all the instincts, to all the ideas that form the 
treasure of mankind. On the contrary, if sentiment is not the 
good itself, it is its faithful companion and useful auxiliary. It 
is as it were the sign of the presence of the good, and renders 
the accomplishment of it more easy. We always have sophisms 
at our disposal, in order to persuade ourselves that our true 
interest is to satisfy present passion ; but sophism has less influ- 
ence over the mind when the mind is in some sort defended by 
the heart. Nothing is, therefore, more salutary than to excite 
and preserve in the soul those noble sentiments that lift us above 
the slavery of personal interest. The habit of participating in 
the sentiments of virtuous men disposes us to act like them. To 
cultivate in ourselves benevolence and sympathy is to fertilize the 
source of charity and love, is to nourish and develop the germ of 
generosity and devotion. 

It is seen that we render sincere homage to the ethics of sen- 
timent. These ethics are true, — only they are not sufficient for 
themselves ; they need a principle which authorizes them. 

I act well, and I feel on account of it an internal satisfaction ; 
I do evil, and feel remorse on account of it. These two senti- 
ments do not qualify the act that I have just done, since they 
follow it. Would it be possible for us to feel any internal satis- 
faction for having acted well if we did not judge that we had 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 261 

acted well ? — any remorse for having done evil, if we did not 
judge that we had done evil ? At the same time that we do 
such or such an act, a natural and instinctive judgment charac- 
terizes it, and it is in consequence of this judgment that our 
sensibility is moved. Sentiment is not this primitive and imme- 
diate judgment ; far from forming the basis of the idea of the 
good, it supposes it. It is manifestly a vicious circle to derive 
the knowledge of the good from that which would not exist 
without this knowledge. 1 

So is it not because we find a good action that we sympathize 
with it ? Is it not because the dispositions of a man appear to 
us conformed to the idea of justice, that we are inclined to par- 
ticipate in them with him ? Moreover, if sympathy were the 
true criterion of the good, every thing for which we feel sympa- 
thy would be good. But sympathy is not only related to things 
in their nature moral, we also sympathize with the grief and the 
joy that have nothing to do with virtue and crime. We even 
sympathize with physical sufferings. Moral sympathy is only a 
case of general sympathy. It must even be acknowledged that 
sympathy is not always in accordance with right. We some- 
times sympathize with certain' sentiments that we condemn, be- 
cause, without being in themselves bad — which would prevent 
all sympathy — they give an inclination to the greatest faults ; 
for example, love, which comes so near to irregularity, and emu- 
lation, that so quickly leads to ambition. 

Benevolence also is not always determined by the good alone. 
And, again, when it is applied to a virtuous man, it supposes a 
judgment by which we pronounce that this man is virtuous. It 
is not because we wish the author of an action well that we judge 
that this action is good ; it is because we judge that this action 
is good that we wish its author well. This is not all. In the 
sentiment of benevolence is enveloped a new judgment which is 

1 See 1st part, lecture 5, On Mysticism, and 2d part, lecture 6, On the Sen- 
timent of the Beautiful. See, also, 1st Series, vol. iv., detailed refutation of 
the Theories of Hutcheson and Smith. 



262 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

not in sympathy. This judgment is the following : the author 
of a good action deserves to be happy, as the author of a bad 
action deserves to suffer in order to expiate it. This is the rea- 
son why we desire happiness for the one and reparatory suffering 
for the other. Benevolence is little else than the sensible form 
of this judgment. 

All these sentiments, therefore, suppose an anterior and supe- 
rior judgment. Everywhere and always the same vicious circle. 
From the fact that the sentiments which we have just described 
have a moral character, it is concluded that they constitute the 
idea of the good, whilst it is the idea of the good that communi- 
cates to them the character that we perceive in them. 

Another difficulty is, that sentiments pertain to sensibility, 
and borrow from it something of its relative and changing nature. 
It is, then, very necessary that all men should be made to enjoy 
with the same delicacy the pleasures of the heart. There are 
gross natures and natures refined. If your desires are impetuous 
and violent, will not the idea of the pleasures of virtue be in you 
much more easily overcome by the force of passion than if na- 
ture had given you a tranquil temperament ? The state of the 
atmosphere, health, sickness, calm or rouse our moral sensibility. 
Solitude, by delivering man up to himself, leaves to remorse all 
its energy, the presence of death redoubles it ; but the world, 
noise, force of example, habit, without power to smother it, in 
some sort stun it. The spirit has a little season of rest. We 
are not always in the vein of enthusiasm. Courage itself has its 
intermissions. We know the celebrated expression: He was 
one day brave. Humor has its vicissitudes that influence our 
most intimate sentiments. The purest, the most ideal sentiment 
still pertains on some side to organization. The inspiration of 
the poet, the passion of the lover, the enthusiasm of the mar- 
tyr, have their languors and shortcomings that often depend 
on very pitiable material causes. On those perpetual fluctu- 
ations of sentiment, is it possible to ground a legislation equal 
for all? 



OTHEE DEFECTIVE PELN'CIPLES. 

Sympathy and benevolence do not escape the conditions of all 
the phenomena of sensibility. We do not all possess in the 
same degree the power of feeling what others experience. Those 
who have suffered most best comprehend suffering, and conse- 
quently feel for it the most lively compassion. With mere 
imagination one also represents to himself better and feels more 
what passes in the souls of his fellow-man. One feels more 
sympathy for physical pleasures and pains, another for pleasures 
and pains of soul ; and each of these sympathies has in each of 
us its degrees and variations. They not only differ, they often 
oppose each other. Sympathy for talent weakens the indigna- 
tion that outraged virtue produces. We overlook many things 
in Voltaire, in Rousseau, in Mirabeau, and we excuse them on 
account of the corruption of their century. The sympathy 
caused by the pain of a condemned person renders less lively the 
just antipathy excited by his crime. Thus turns and wavers at 
each step that sympathy which some would set up as the su- 
preme arbiter of the good. Benevolence does not vary less. 
We have souls naturally more or less affectionate, more or less 
animated. And, then, like sympathy, benevolence receives the 
counter-stroke of different passions that are mingled with it. 
Friendship, for example, often renders us, in spite of ourselves, 
more benevolent than justice would wish. 

Is it not a rule of prudence not to listen to, without always 
disdaining them, the inspirations — often capricious — of the heart ? 
Governed by reason, sentiment becomes to it an admirable sup- 
port. But, delivered up to itself, in a little while it degenerates 
into passion, and passion is fantastic, excessive, unjust; it gives 
to the soul spring and energy, but generally troubles and perverts 
it. It is even not very far from egoism, and it usually terminates 
in that, wholly generous as it is or seems to be in the beginning. 
Unless Ave always keep in sight the good and the inflexible obli- 
gation that is attached to it, unless we always keep in sight this 
fixed and immutable point, the soul knows not where to betake 
itself on that moving ground that is called sensibility ; it iloats 



264: LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

from sentiment to passion, from generosity to selfishness, ascend- 
ing one day to the pitch of enthusiasm, and the next day descend- 
ing to all the miseries of personality. 

Thus the ethics of sentiment, although superior to those of 
interest, are not less insufficient: 1st. They give as the founda- 
tion of the idea of the good what is founded on this same idea; 
2d. The rule that they propose is too mobile to be universally 
obligatory. 1 

There is another system of which I will also say, as of the pre- 
ceding, that it is not false, but incomplete and insufficient. 

The partisans of the ethics of utility and happiness have tried 
to save their principle by generalizing it. According to them, 
the good can be nothing but happiness ; but egoism is wrong in 
understanding by that the happiness of the individual ; we must 
understand by it the general happiness. 

Let us establish, in the first place, that the new principle is en- 
tirely opposed to that of personal interest, for, according to cir- 



1 We do not grow weary of citing M. Eoyer-Collard. He has marked the 
defects of the ethics of sentiment in a lively and powerful passage, from 
which we borrow some traits. (Euvres de Beid, vol. iii., p. 410, 411 : " The 
perception of the moral qualities of human actions is accompanied by an 
emotion of the soul that is called sentiment. Sentiment is a support of nature 
that invites us to good by the attraction of the noblest joys of which man is 
capable, and turns us from evil by the contempt, the aversion, the horror 
with which it inspires us. It is a fact that by the contemplation of a beauti- 
ful action or a noble character, at the same time that we perceive these qual- 
ities of the action and the character (perception, which is a judgment), we 
feel for the person a love mingled with respect, and sometimes an admiration 
that is full of tenderness. A bad action, a loose and perfidious character, 
excite a contrary perception and sentiment. The internal approbation of 
conscience and remorse are sentiments attached to the perception of the 
moral qualities of our own actions. ... I do not weaken the part of 
sentiment ; yet it is not true that ethics are wholly in sentiment ; if we main- 
tain this, we annihilate moral distinctions. . . . Let ethics be wholly in 
sentiment, and nothing is in itself good, nothing is in, itself evil ; good and 
evil are relative ; the qualities of human actions are precisely such as each 
one feels them to be. Change sentiment, and you change every thing; tho 
same action is at once good, indifferent, and bad, according to the affection 
of the spectator. Silence sentiment, and actions are only physical phenom- 
ena; obligation is resolved into inclinations, virtue into pleasure, honesty 
into utility. Such are the ethics of Epicurus: Dil mellora piis /" 



OTHER DETECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 265 

cumstances, it may demand, not only a passing sacrifice, but an 
irreparable sacrifice, that of life. Now, the wisest calculations of 
personal interest cannot go thus far. 

And, notwithstanding, this principle is far from containing true 
ethics and the whole of ethics. 

The principle of general interest leans towards disinterested- 
ness, and this is certainly much ; but disinterestedness is the con- 
dition of virtue, not virtue itself. We may commit an injustice 
with the most entire disinterestedness. From the fact that an 
action does not profit him who does it, it does not follow that it 
may not be in itself very unjust, in seeking general interest 
before all, we escape ; it is true, that vice of soul which is called 
selfishness, but we may fall into a thousand iniquities. Or, in- 
deed, it must be felt, that general interest is always conformed to 
justice. But these two ideas are not adequate to each other. 
If they very often go together, they are sometimes also separated. 
Themistocles proposed to the Athenians to burn the fleet of the 
allies that was in the port of Athens, and thus to secure to them- 
selves the supremacy. The project is useful, says Aristides, but 
it is unjust, and on account of this simple speech, the Athenians 
renounce an advantage that must be purchased by an injustice. 
Observe that Themistocles had no particular interest in that ; he 
thought only of the interest of his country. But, had he hazarded 
or given his life in order to engage the Athenians in such an act, 
he would only have been consecrating — what has often been 
seen — an admirable devotion to a course in itself immoral. 

To this it is replied, that if, in the example cited, justice and 
interest exclude each other, it is because the interest was not 
sufficiently general ; and the celebrated maxim is arrived at, that 
one must sacrifice himself to his family, his family to the city, the 
city to country, country to humanity, that, in fine, the good is 
the interest of the greatest number. 1 



1 In this formula is recognized the system of Bentham, who, for some time, 
had numerous partisans in Engla d, and even in France. 

12 



266 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

When you have gone thus far, you have not yet attained even 
the idea of justice. The interest of humanity, like that of the 
individual, may accord in fact with justice, for in that there is 
certainly no incompatibility, but the two things are none the 
more identical, so that we cannot say with exactness that the in- 
terest of humanity is the foundation of justice. A single case, 
even a single hypothesis, in which the interest of humanity should 
not accord with the good, is sufficient to enable us to conclude 
that one is not essentially the other. 

We go farther : if it is the interest of humanity that constitutes 
and measures justice, that only is unjust which this interest de- 
clares to be so. But you are not able to affirm absolutely, that, 
in any circumstance, the interest of humanity will not demand 
such or such an action ; and if it demands it, by virtue of your 
principle, it will be necessary to do it, whatever it may be, and to 
do it inasmuch as it is just. 

You order me to sacrifice particular interest to general interest. 
But in the name of what do you order me to do this ? Is it in 
the name of interest ? If interest, as such, must touch me, evi- 
dently my interest must also touch me, and I do not see why I 
should sacrifice it to that of others. 

The supreme end of human life, you say, is happiness. I hence 
conclude very reasonably, that the supreme end of my life is my 
happiness. 

In order to ask of me the sacrifice of my happiness, it must be 
called for by some other principle than happiness itself. 

Consider to what perplexity this famous principle of the greatest 
good of the greatest number condemns me. I have already much 
difficulty in discerning my true interest in the obscurity of the 
future ; by substituting for the infallible voice of justice the un- 
certain calculations of personal interest, you have not rendered 
action easy for me ;' but it becomes impossible, if it is necessary 
to seek, before acting, what is the interest not only of myself, but 

1 See lecture 12. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 267 

of my family, not only of my family, but of my country, not only 
of my country, but of humanity. What ! must I embrace the 
entire world in my foresight ? What ! is such the price of virtue ? 
You impose upon me a knowledge that God alone possesses. 
Am I in his counsels so as to adjust my actions according to his 
decrees ? The philosophy of history and the wisest diplomacy 
are not, then, sufficient for conducting ourselves well. Imagine, 
therefore, that there is no mathematical science of human life. 
Chance and liberty confound the profoundest calculations, over- 
turn the best-established fortunes, relieve the most desperate 
miseries, mingle good fortune and bad, confound all foresight. 

And would you establish ethics on a foundation so mobile ? 
How much place you leave for sophism in that complaisant and 
enigmatical law of general interest I 1 It will not be very difficult 



1 1st Series, vol. iv., p. 174: "If the good is that alone which must be the 
most useful to the greatest number, where can the good be found, and who 
can discern it? In order to know whether such an action, which I propose 
to myself to do, is good or bad, I must be sure, in spite of its visible and 
direct utility in the present moment, that it will not become injurious in a 
future that I do not yet know. I must seek whether, useful to mine and 
those that surround me, it will not have counter-strokes disastrous to the 
human race, of which I must think before all. It is important that I should 
know whether the money that I am tempted to give this unfortunate who 
needs it, could not be otherwise more usefully employed. In fact, the rule 
is here the greatest good of the greatest number. In order to follow it, what 
calculations are imposed on me? In the obscurity of the future, in the un- 
certainty of the somewhat remote consequences of every action, the surest 
way is to do nothing that is not related to myself, and the last result of a 
prudence so refined is indifference and egoism. Supposing you have re- 
ceived a deposit from an opulent neighbor, who is old and sick, a sum of 
which he has no need, and without which your numerous family runs the 
risk of dying with famine. He calls on you for this sum, — what will you do ? 
The greatest number is on your side, and the greatest utility also ; for this 
sum is insignificant for your rich neighbor, whilst it will save your family 
from misery, and perhaps from death. Father of a family, I should like 
much to know in the name of what principle you would hesitate to retain, 
the sum which is necessary to you ? Intrepid reasoner, placed in the alter- 
native of killing this sick old man, or of letting your wife and children die of 
hunger, in all honesty of conscience you ought to kill him. You have the 
right, it is even your duty to sacrifice the less advantage of a single person 
to much the greater advantage of a greater number ; and since this principle 
is the expression of true justice, you are only its minister in doing what you 



268 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

always to find some remote reason of general interest, which will 
excuse us from being faithful in the present moment to our 
friends, when they shall be in misfortune. A man in adversity 
addresses himself to my generosity. But could I not employ my 
money in a way more useful to humanity ? Will not the coun- 
try have need of it to-morrow ? Let us virtuously keep it for the 
country then. Moreover, even where the interest of all seems 
evident, there still remains some chance of error ; it is, therefore, 
better to withhold. It will always be wisdom to withhold. Yes, 
when it is necessary, in order to do well, to be sure of serving the 
greatest interest of the greatest number, none but the rash and 
senseless will dare to act. The principle of general interest will 
produce, I admit, great devotedness, but it will also produce great 
crimes. Is it not in the name of this principle that fanatics of 
every kind, fanatics in religion, fanatics in liberty, fanatics in phi- 
losophy, taking it upon themselves to understand the eternal inter- 
est of humanity, have engaged in abominable acts, mingled often 
with a sublime disinterestedness ? 

Another error of this system is that it confounds the good itself 
with one of its applications. If the good is the greatest interest 
of the greatest number, the consequence is clear, that there are 
only public and social ethics, and no private ethics ; there is only 
a single class of duties, duties towards others, and there are no 
duties towards ourselves. But this is retrenching precisely those 
of our duties that most surely guarantee the exercise of all the 
rest. 1 The most constant relations that I sustain are with that 



do. A vanquishing enemy or a furious people threaten destruction to a 
whole city, if there be not delivered up to them the head of such a man, 
who is, nevertheless, innocent. In the name of the greatest good of the 
greatest number, this man will be immolated without scruple. It might 
even be maintained that innocent to the last, he%as ceased to be so, since 
he is an obstacle to the public good. It having once been declared that jus- 
tice is the interest of the greatest number, the only question is to know 
where this interest is. Now, here, doubt is impossible ; therefore, it is per- 
fectly just to offer innocence as a holocaust to public safety. This conse- 
quence must be accepted, or the principle rejected." 
1 See lecture 15, Private and Public Ethics. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 269 

being which is myself. I am my own most habitual society. I 
bear in myself, as Plato 1 has well said, a whole world of ideas, 
sentiments, desires, passions, emotions, which claim a legislation. 
This necessary legislation is suppressed. 

Let us also say a word on a system that, under sublime appear- 
ances, conceals a vicious principle. 

There are persons who believe that they are magnifying God, 
by placing in his will alone the foundation of the moral law, and 
the sovereign motive of humanity in the punishments and re- 
wards that it has pleased him to attach to the respect and violation 
of his will. 

Let us understand what we are about in a matter of such deli- 
cacy. 

It is certain, and we shall establish it for the good,' 2 as we have 
done for the true and the beautiful, 3 it is certain that, from expla- 
nations to explanations, we come to be convinced that God is 
definitively the supreme principle of ethics, so that it may be very 
truly said, that the good is the expression of his will, since his 
will is itself the expression of the eternal and absolute justice that 
resides in him. God wills, without doubt, that we should act 
according to the law of justice that he has put in our understand- 
ing and our heart; but it is not at all necessary to conclude that 
he has arbitrarily instituted this law. Far from that, justice is in 
the will of God only because it has its roots in his intelligence 
and wisdom, that is to say, in his most intimate nature and es- 
sence. 

While making, then, every reservation in regard to what is 
true in the system that founds ethics on the will of God, we must 
show what there is in this system, as it is presented to us, false, 
arbitrary, and incompatible with ethics themselves. 4 



1 Plato, Republic, vol. ix. and x. of our translation. 

2 Lecture 16. 3 Lectures 4 and 7. 

4 This polemic is not new. The school of St. Thomas engaged in it early 
against the theory of Occam, which was quite similar to that which we com- 
bat. See our Sketch of a General History of Philosophy, '2d Series, vol. ii., 



270 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

In the first place, it does not pertain to the will, whatever it 
ma) 7 be, to institute the good, any more than it belongs to it to 
institute the true and the beautiful. I have no idea of the will 
of God except by my own, to be sure with the differences that 
separate what is finite from what is infinite. Now, I cannot by 
my will found the least truth. Is it because my will is limited ? 
No ; were it armed with infinite power, it would, in this respect, 
be equally impotent. Such is the nature of my will that, in 
doing a thing, it is conscious of the power to do the opposite ; 
and that is not an accidental character of the will, it is its funda- 
mental character ; if, then, it is supposed that truth, or that first 
part of it which is called justice, has been established as it is by 
an act of volition, human or Divine, it must be acknowledged 
that another act might have established it otherwise, and made 
what is now just unjust, and what is unjust just. But such mo- 
bility is contrary to the nature of justice and truth. In fact, 
moral truths are as absolute as metaphysical truths. God can- 
not make effects exist without a cause, phenomena without a 
substance ; neither can he make it evil to respect his word, to 
love truth, to repress one's passions. The principles of ethics are 
immutable axioms like those of geometry. Of moral laws espe- 
cially must be said what Montesquieu said of all laws in general, 
— they are necessary relations that are derived from the nature of 
things. 

Let us suppose that the good and the just are derived from 
the divine will ; on the divine will obligation will also rest. But 
can any will whatever be the foundation of obligation? The 



leet. 9, On Scholasticism. Here are two decisive passages from St. Thomas, 
1st book of the Summation against the Gentiles, chap, lxxxvii : " Per prae- 
dicta autem excluditur error diccnthim omnia procedere a Deo secundum 
simpliccm voluntatem, ut de nullo oporteat rationem reddere, nisi quia 
Deus vult. Quod etiam divinae Scripturae contrariatur, qua? Deum perhibet 
secundum ordinem sapientiae suae omnia fecissc, secundum illud Psalm ciii. : 
omnia in sapicntia fecisti." Ibid., book ii., chap. xxiv. : " Per hoc autem ex- 
cluditur quorundam error qui dicebant omnia ex simplica divina voluntate 
dependere aliqua ratione." 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 271 

divine will is the will of an omnipotent being, and I am a feeble 
being. This relation of a feeble being to an omnipotent being, 
does not contain in itself any moral idea. One may be forced to 
obey the stronger, but he is not obligated to do it. The sove- 
reign orders of the will of God, if his will could for a moment be 
separated from his other attributes, would not contain the least 
ray of justice ; and, consequently, there would not descend into 
my soul the least shade of obligation. 

One will exclaim, — It is not the arbitrary will of God that 
makes the foundation of obligation and justice ; it is his just will. 
Very well. Every thing changes then. It is not the pure will 
of God that obligates us, it is the motive itself that determines 
his will, that is to say, the justice passed into his will. The dis- 
tinction between the just and the unjust is not then the work of 
his will. 

One of two things. Either we found ethics on the will of 
God alone, and then the distinction between good and evil, just 
and unjust, is gratuitous, and moral obligation does not exist ; or 
you give authority to the will of God by justice, which, in your 
hypothesis, must have received from the will of God its authority, 
which is a petitio principii. 

Another petitio principii still more evident. In the first place, 
you are compelled, in order legitimately to draw justice from the 
will of God, to suppose that this will is just, or I defy any one to 
show that this will alone can ever form the basis of justice. 
Moreover, evidently you cannot comprehend what a just will of 
God is, if you do not already possess the idea of justice. This 
idea, then, does not come from that of the will of God. 

On the one hand, you may have, and you do have, the idea of 
justice, without understanding the will of God ; on the other, you 
cannot conceive the justice of the divine will, without having 
conceived justice elsewhere. 

Are not these reasons sufficient, I pray you, to conclude that 
the sole will of God is not for us the principle of the idea of the 

3 



272 LECTURE THIRTEENTH. 

And now, behold the natural consummation of the ethical 
system that we are examining : — the just and the unjust are what 
it has pleased God to declare such, by attaching to them the re- 
wards and punishments of another life. The divine will mani- 
fests itself here only by an arbitrary order; it adds to this order 
promises and threats. 

But to what human faculty are addressed the promise and 
threat of the chastisements and the rewards of another life ? To 
the same one that in this life fears pain and seeks pleasure, shuns 
unhappiness and desires happiness, that is to say, to sensibility 
animated by imagination, that is to say, again, to what is most 
changing in each of us and most different in the human species. 
The joys and sufferings of another life excite in us the two most 
vivid but most mobile passions, hope and fear. Every thing in- 
fluences our fears and hopes, — aye, health, the passing cloud, a 
ray of the sun, a cup of coffee, a thousand causes of this kind. I 
have known men, even philosophers, who on certain days hoped 
more, and other days less. And such a basis some would give 
to ethics ! Then it is doing nothing else than proposing for 
human conduct an interested motive. The calculation which I 
obey is purer, if you will ; the happiness that one makes me 
hope for is greater ; but I see in that no justice that obligates 
me, no virtue and no vice in me, who know or do not know how 
to make this calculation, not having a head as strong as that of 
Pascal, 1 who yield to or resist those fears and hopes according to 
the disposition of my sensibility and my imagination, over which 
I have no power. Finally, the pains and pleasures of the future 
life are instituted on the ground of punishments and rewards. 
Now, none but actions in themselves good or bad can be re- 
warded and punished. If already there is in itself no good, no 
law that in conscience we are obligated to follow, there is neither 
merit nor demerit; recompense is not then recompense, nor 



1 See the famous calculus applied to the immortality of the soul, Pes Peiv- 
sees de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Series, p. 229-235, and p. 289-296. 



OTHER DEFECTIVE PRINCIPLES. 273 

penalty penalty, since they are such only on the condition of 
being the complement and the sanction of the idea of the good. 
Where this idea does not pre-exist, there remain, instead of rec- 
ompense and penalty, only the attraction of pleasure and the fear 
of suffering, added to a prescription deprived in itself of morality. 
In that we come back to the punishments of earth invented for 
the purpose of frightening popular imagination, and supported 
solely on the decrees of legislators, on an abstraction of good and 
evil, of justice and injustice, of merit and demerit. It is the 
worst human justice that is found thus transported into heaven. 
We shall see that the human soul has foundation somewhat 
solider. 1 

These different systems, false or incomplete, having been 
rejected, we arrive at the doctrine that is to our eyes perfect 
truth, because it admits only certain facts, neglects none, and 
maintains for all of them their character and rank. 

1 Lecture 16. 

12* 



LECTURE XIY. 

TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 

Description of the different facts that compose the moral phenomena. — 
Analysis of each of these facts : — 1st, Judgment and idea of the good. 
That this judgment is absolute. Eelation between the true and the good. 
— 2d, Obligation. Eefutation of the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea 
of the good from obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of 
the good. — 3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion of 
liberty. — 4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments and rewards. 
— 5th, Moral sentiments. — Harmony of all these facts in nature and 
science. 

Philosophic criticism is not confined to discerning the errors 
of systems ; it especially consists in recognizing and disengaging 
the truths mixed with these errors. The truths scattered in 
different systems compose the whole truth which each of these 
almost always expresses on a single side. So, the systems that 
we have just run over and refuted deliver up to us, in some 
sort, divided and opposed to each other, all the essential elements 
of human morality. The only question is to collect them, in 
order to restore the entire moral phenomenon. The history of 
philosophy, thus understood, prepares the way for or confirms 
psychological analysis, as psychological analysis receives from 
the history of philosophy its light. Let us, then, interrogate 
ourselves in presence of human actions, and faithfully collect, 
without altering them by any preconceived system, the ideas and 
the sentiments of every kind that the spectacle of these actions 
produce in us. 

There are actions that are agreeable or disagreeable to us, 
that procure us advantages or injure us, in a word, that are, in 
one way or another, directly or indirectly, addressed to our inter- 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 275 

est. We are rejoiced with actions that are useful to us, and 
shun those that may injure us. We seek earnestly and with thc- 
greatest effort what seems to us our interest. 

This is an incontestable fact. Here is another fact that is not 
less incontestable. 

There are actions that have no relation to us, that, conse- 
quently, we cannot estimate and judge on the ground of our 
interest, that we nevertheless qualify as good or bad. 

Suppose that before your eyes a man, strong and armed, falls 
upon another man, feeble and disarmed, whom he maltreats and 
kills, in order to take away his purse. Such an action does not 
reach you in any way, and, notwithstanding, it fills you with 
indignation. 1 You do every thing in your power that this mur- 
derer may be arrested and delivered up to justice ; you demand 
that he shall be punished, and if he is punished in one way or 
another, you think that it is just ; your indignation is appeased 
only after a chastisement proportioned to the crime committed 
has been inflicted on the culprit. I repeat that in this you 
neither hope nor fear any thing for yourself. Were you placed 
in an inaccessible fortress, from the top of which you might wit- 
ness this scene of murder, you would feel these sentiments none 
the less. 

This is only a rude picture of what takes place in you at the 
sight of a crime. Apply now a little reflection and analysis to 
the different traits of which this picture is composed, without 
destroying their nature, and you will have a complete philosophic 
theory. 

What is it that first strikes you in what you have experienced ? 
It is doubtless the indignation, the instinctive horror that you 
have felt. There is, then, in the soul a power of raising indig- 
nation that is foreign to all personal interests ! There are, then, 
in us sentiments of which we are not the end ! There is an an- 
tipathy, an aversion, a horror, that are not related to what 

1 On indignation, see lecture 11. 



276 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

injures us, but to acts whose remotest influence cannot reach 
us, that we detest for the sole reason that we judge them to 
be bad ! 

Yes, we judge them to be bad. A judgment is enveloped 
under the sentiments that we have just mentioned. In fact, in 
the midst of the indignation that transports you, let one tell you 
that all this generous anger pertains to your particular organiza- 
tion, and that, after all, the action that takes place is indifferent, 
— you revolt against such an explanation, you exclaim that the 
action is bad in itself; you not only express a sentiment, you 
pronounce a judgment. The next day after the action, when 
the feelings that agitated your soul have been quieted, you none 
the less still judge that the action was bad; you judge thus six 
months after, you judge thus always and everywhere ; and it is 
because you judge that this action is in itself bad, that you bear 
this other judgment, that it should not have been done. 

This double judgment is at the foundation of sentiment ; other- 
wise sentiment would be without reason. If the action is not 
bad in itself, if he who has done it was not obligated not to do 
it, the indignation that we experience is only a physical emotion, 
an excitement of the senses, of the imagination, of the heart, — a 
phenomenon destitute of every moral character, like the trouble 
that visits us before some frightful scene of nature. You cannot 
rationally feel indignation for the author of an indifferent action. 
Every sentiment of disinterested anger against the author of an 
action supposes in him who feels it, this double conviction : — 
1st, That the action is in itself bad; 2d, That it should not have 
been done. 

This sentiment also supposes that the author of this action has 
himself a consciousness of the evil that he has done, and of the 
obligation that he has violated ; for without this he would have 
acted like a brutal and blind force, not like an intelligent and 
moral force, and we should have felt towards him no more indig- 
nation than towards a rock that falls on our head, towards a tor- 
rent that sweeps us away into an abyss. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 277 

Indignation equally supposes in him who is the object of it an- 
other character still, to wit, that he is free, — that he could do or 
not do what he has done. It is evident that the agent must be 
free in order to be responsible. 

You desire that the murderer may be arrested and delivered up 
to justice, you desire that be may be punished ; when he has 
been arrested, delivered up to justice, and punished, you are sat- 
isfied. What does that mean ? Is it a capricious movement of 
the imagination and heart ? No. Calm or indignant, at the 
moment of the crime or a long time after, without any spirit of 
personal vengeance, since you are not the least interested in this 
affair, you none the less declare that the murderer ought to be 
punished. If, instead of receiving a punishment, the culpable 
man makes his crime a stepping-stone to fortune, you still declare 
that, far from deserving prosperity, he deserves to suffer in repa- 
ration of his fault ; you protest against lot, and appeal to a su- 
perior justice. This judgment philosophers have called the judg- 
ment of merit and demerit. I suppose, in the mind of man, the 
idea of a supreme law that attaches happiness to virtue, unhap- 
piness to crime. Omit the idea of this law, and the judgment of 
merit and demerit is without foundation. Omit this judgment, 
and indignation against prosperous crime and the neglect of vir- 
tue is an unintelligible, even an impossible sentiment, and never, 
at the sight of crime, would you think of demanding the chas- 
tisement of a criminal. 

All the parts of the moral phenomenon are connected together ; 
all are equally certain parts, — destroy one, and you completely 
overturn the whole phenomenon. The most common observation 
bears witness to all these facts, and the least subtle logic easily 
discovers their connection. It is necessary to renounce even sen- 
timent, or it must be avowed that sentiment covers a judgment, 
the judgment of the essential distinction between good and evil, 
that this distinction involves an obligation, that this obligation 
is applied to an intelligent and free agent; in fine, it must be ob- 
served that the distinction between merit and demerit, that cor- 



278 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

responds to the distinction between good and evil, contains the 
principle of the natural harmony between virtue and happiness. 

What have we done thus far ? We have done as the physicist 
or chemist does, who submits a composite body to analysis and 
reduces it to its simple elements. The only difference here is that 
the phenomenon to which our analysis is applied is in us, instead 
of being out of us. Besides, the processes employed are exactly 
the same ; there is in them neither system nor hypothesis ; there 
are only experience and the most immediate induction. 

In order to render experience more certain, we may vary it. 
Instead of examining what takes place in us when we are spec- 
tators of bad or good actions in another, let us interrogate our 
own consciousness when we are doing well or ill. In this case, 
the different elements of the moral phenomenon are still more 
striking, and their order appears more distinctly. 

Suppose that a dying friend has confided to me a more or less 
important deposit, charging me to remit it after his death to a 
person whom he has designated to me alone, and who himself 
knows not what has been done in his favor. He who confided to 
me the deposit dies, and carries with him his secret ; he for whom 
the deposit has been made to me has no knowledge of it ; if, then, 
I wish to appropriate this deposit to myself, no one will ever be 
able to suspect me. In this case what should I do ? It is diffi- 
cult to imagine circumstances more favorable for crime. If I con- 
sult only interest, I ought not to hesitate to return the deposit. 
If I hesitate, in the system of interest, I am senseless, and I revolt 
against the law of my nature. Doubt alone, in the impunity that is 
assured me, would betray in me a principle different from interest. 

But naturally I do not doubt, I believe with the most entire 
certainty, that the deposit confided to me does not belong to me, 
that it has been confided to me to be remitted to another, and 
that to this other it belongs. Take away interest, and I should 
not even think of returning this deposit, — it is interest alone that 
tempts me. It tempts me, it does not bear me away without 
resistance. Hence the struggle between interest and duty, — a 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 279 

struggle filled with troubles, opposite resolutions, by turns taken 
and abandoned ; it energetically attests the presence of a principle 
of action different from interest and quite as powerful. 

Duty succumbs, interest triumphs over it. I retain the deposit 
that has been confided to me, and apply it to my own wants, and 
to the wants of my family ; it makes me rich, and in appearance 
happy ; but I internally suffer with that bitter and secret suffer- 
ing that is called remorse. 1 The fact is certain ; it has been a 
thousand times described ; all languages contain the word, and 
there is no one who, in some degree, has not experienced the 
thing, that sharp gnawing at the heart which is caused by every 
fault, great or small, as long as it has not been expiated. This 
painful recollection follows me in the midst of pleasures and pros- 
perity. The applauses of the crowd are not able to silence this 
inexorable witness. Only a long habit of sin and crime, an accu- 
mulation of oft-repeated faults, can compass this sentiment, at 
once avenging and expiatory. When it is stifled, every resource 
is lost, and an end is made of the soul's life ; as long as it endures, 
the sacred fire is not wholly extinguished. 

Remorse is a suffering of a particular character. In remorse I 
do not suffer on account of such an impression made upon my 
senses, nor on account of the thwarting of my natural pas- 
sions, nor on account of the injury done or threatened to my in- 
terest, nor by the disquietude of my hopes and the agony of my 
fears : no, I suffer without any external cause, yet I suffer in the 
most cruel manner. I suffer for the sole reason that I have a 
consciousness of having committed a bad action which I knew I 
was obligated not to commit, which I was able not to commit, 
which leaves behind it a chastisement that I know to be deserved. 
No exact analysis can take away from remorse, without destroy- 
ing it, a single one of these elements. Remorse contains the idea 
of good and evil, of an obligatory law, of liberty, of merit and 
demerit. All these ideas were already in the struggle between 

On remorse, see lecture 11. 



280 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

good and evil ; they reappear in remorse. In vain interest coun- 
selled me to appropriate the deposit that had been confided to 
me ; something said to me, and still says to me, that to appro- 
priate it is to do evil, is to commit an injustice ; I judged, and 
judge, thus, not such a day, but always, not under such a circum- 
stance, but under all circumstances. In vain I say to myself that 
the person to whom I ought to remit this deposit has no need of 
it, and that it is necessary to me ; I judge that a deposit must be 
respected without regard to persons, and the obligation that is 
imposed on me appears inviolable and absolute. Having taken 
upon myself this obligation, I believe by this fact alone that I 
have the power to fulfil it : this is not all ; I am directly con- 
scious of this power, I know with the most certain knowledge 
that I am able to keep this deposit or to remit it to the lawful 
owner ; and it is precisely because I am conscious of this power 
that I judge that I have deserved punishment for not having 
made the use of it for which it was given me. It is, in fine, be- 
cause I have a lively consciousness of all that, that I experience 
this sentiment of indignation against myself, this suffering of re- 
morse which expresses in itself the moral phenomenon entire. 

According to the rules of the experimental method, let us take 
an opposite course ; let us suppose that, in spite of the suggestions 
of interest, in spite of the pressing goad of misery, in order to be 
faithful to pledged faith, I send the deposit to the person that had 
been designated to me ; instead of the painful scene that just now 
passed in consciousness, there passes another quite as real, but 
very different. I know that I have done well ; I know that I 
have not obeyed a chimera, an artificial and mendacious law, but 
a law true, universal, obligatory upon all intelligent and free be- 
ings. I know that I have made a good use of my liberty ; I 
have of this liberty, by the very use that I have made of it, a 
sentiment more distinct, more energetic, and, in some sort, tri- 
umphant. Every opinion would accuse me in vain, I appeal 
from it to a better justice, and this justice is already declared in 
me by sentiments that press upon each other in my soul. I 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 281 

respect myself, esteem myself, and believe that I have a right to 
the esteem of others ; I have the sentiment of my dignity ; I feel 
for myself only sentiments of affection opposed to that species of 
horror for myself with which I was just now inspired. Instead 
of remorse, I feel an incomparable joy that no one can deprive 
me of, that, were every thing else wanting to me, would console 
and support me. This sentiment of pleasure is as penetrating, 
as profound as was the remorse. It expresses the satisfaction of 
all the generous principles of human nature, as remorse repre- 
sented their revolt. It testifies by the internal happiness that it 
gives me to the sublime accord between happiness and virtue, 
whilst remorse is the first link in that fatal chain, that chain of 
iron and adamant, which, according to Plato, 1 binds pain to 
transgression, trouble to passion, misery to faithlessness, vice, and 
crime. 

Moral sentiment is the echo of all the moral judgments and 
entire moral life. It is so striking that it has been regarded by 
a somewhat superficial philosophy as sufficient to found entire 
ethics ; and, nevertheless, we have just seen that this admirable 
sentiment would not exist without the different judgments that 
we have just enumerated ; it is their consequence, but not their 
principle ; it supplies, but does not constitute them ; it does not 
take their place, but sums them up. 

Now that we are in possession of all the elements of human 
morality, we proceed to take these elements one by one, and sub- 
mit them to a detailed analysis. 

That which is most apparent in the complex phenomenon that 
we are studying is sentiment; but its foundation is judgment. 

The judgment of good and evil is the principle of all that fol- 
lows it ; but this judgment rests only on the constitution itself of 
human nature, like the judgment of the true and the judgment 
of the beautiful. As well as these two judgments, 2 that of the 
good is a simple, primitive, indecomposable judgment. 

1 See the Gorgias, with the Argument, vol. iii. of our translation. 

2 Lectures 1 and 6. 



282 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

Like them, again, it is not arbitrary. We cannot but fear this 
judgment in presence of certain acts ; and, in fearing it, we know 
that it does not make good or evil, but declares it. The reality 
of moral distinctions is revealed by this judgment, but it is inde- 
pendent of it, as beauty is independent of the eye that perceives 
it, as universal and necessary truths are independent of the reason 
that discovers them. 1 

Good and evil are real characters of human actions, although 
these characters might not be seen with our eyes nor touched 
with our hands. The moral qualities of an action are none the 
less real for not being confounded with the material qualities of 
this action. This is the reason why actions materially identical 
may be morally very different. A homicide is always a homi- 
cide ; nevertheless, it is often a crime, it is also often a legitimate 
action, for example, when it is not done for the sake of vengeance, 
nor for the sake of interest, in a strict case of self-defence. 

It is not the spilling of blood that makes the crime, it is the 
spilling of innocent blood. Innocence and crime, good and evil, 
do not reside in such or such an external circumstance determined 
one for all. Reason recognizes them with certainty under the 
most different appearances, in circumstances sometimes the same 
and sometimes dissimilar. 

Good and evil almost always appear to us connected with par- 
ticular actions ; but it is not on account of what is particular in 
them that these actions are good or bad. So when I declare that 
the death of Socrates is unjust, and that the devotion of Leonidas 
is admirable, it is the unjust death of a wise man that I condemn, 
and the devotion of a hero that I admire. It is not important 
whether this hero be called Leonidas or d'Assas, whether the im- 
molated sage be called Socrates or Bailly. 

The judgment of the good is at first applied to particular ac- 
tions, and it gives birth to general principles which in course 
serve us as rules for judging all actions of the same kind. As 

1 LectureB 2, 3, and 6. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 283 

after having judged that such a particular phenomenon has such 
a particular cause, we elevate ourselves to the general principle 
that every phenomenon has its cause ; x so we erect into a general 
rule the moral judgment that we have borne in regard to a par- 
ticular fact. Thus, at first we admire the death of Leonidas, 
thence we elevate ourselves to the principle that it is good to die 
for one's country. We already possess the principle in its first 
application to Leonidas ; otherwise, this particular application 
would not have been legitimate, it would not have been even 
possible ; but we possess it implicitly ; as soon as it is disengaged, 
it appears to us under its universal and pure form, and we apply 
it to all analogous cases. „ 

Ethics have their axioms like other sciences ; and these axioms 
are rightly called in all languages moral truths. 

It is good not to violate one's oath, and in this is also involved 
a truth. In fact, an oath is founded in the truth of things, — its 
good is only derived. Moral truths considered in themselves 
have no less certainty than mathematical truths. The idea of a 
deposit being given, I ask whether the idea of faithfully keeping 
it is not necessarily attached to it, as to the idea of a triangle is 
attached the idea that its three angles are equal to two right 
angles. You may withhold a deposit ; but, in withholding it, do 
not believe that you change the nature of things, nor that you 
make it possible for a deposit ever to become property. These 
two ideas exclude each other. You have only a false semblance 
of property ; and all the efforts of passion, all the sophisms of 
interest will not reverse the essential differences. This is the 
reason why moral truth is so troublesome, — it is because, like all 
truth, it is what it is, and does not bend to any caprice. Always 
the same and always present, in spite of all our efforts, it inexor- 
ably condemns, with a voice always heard, but not always list- 
ened to, the sensible and the culpable will which thinks to hinder 
it from being by denying it, or rather by pretending to deny it. 

1 1st part, lecture 2. 



284 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

Moral truths are distinguished from other truths by the singu- 
lar character that, as soon as we perceive them, they appear to us 
as the rule of our conduct. If it is true that a deposit is made 
to be remitted to its legitimate possessor, it is necessary to remit 
it to him. To the necessity of believing is here added the neces- 
sity of practising. 

The necessity of practising is obligation. Moral truths, in the 
eyes of reason necessary, are to the will obligatory. 

Moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation, is 
absolute. As necessary truths are not more or less necessary, 1 so 
obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of 
importance between different obligations ; but there are no de- 
grees in the same obligation. We are not somewhat obligated, 
almost obligated ; w r e are either wholly obligated, or not at all. 

If obligation is absolute, it is immutable and universal. For, 
if the obligation of to-day were not the obligation of to-morrow, 
if what is obligatory for me were not so for you, obligation would 
differ from itself, would be relative and contingent. 

This fact of absolute, immutable, universal obligation is so cer- 
tain and so manifest, in spite of all the efforts of the doctrine of 
interest to obscure it, that one of the profoundest moralists of 
modern philosophy, particularly struck with this fact, has re- 
garded it as the principle of the whole of ethics. By separating 
duty from interest which ruins it, and from sentiment which 
enervates it, Kant restored to ethics their true character. He ele- 
vated himself very high in the century of Helvetius, in elevating 
himself to the holy law of duty ; but he still did not ascend high 
enough, he did not reach the reason itself of duty. 

The good for Kant is what is obligatory. But logically, 
whence comes the obligation of performing an action, if not from 
the intrinsic goodness of this act? Is it not because that, in the 
order of reason, it is absolutely impossible to regard a deposit as 
a property, that we cannot appropriate it to ourselves without a 

1 Lecture 2. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 285 

crime ? If one action must be performed, and another action 
must not, it is because there is apparently an essential difference 
between these two acts. To found the good on obligation, in- 
stead of founding obligation on the good, is, therefore, to take the 
effect for the cause, is to draw the principle from the consequence. 

If I ask an honest man who, in spite of the suggestions of 
misery, has respected the deposit that was intrusted to him, why 
he respected it, he will answer me, — because it was my duty. If 
I persist, and ask why it was his duty, he will very rightly 
answer, — because it was just, because it was good. That point 
having been reached, all answers are stopped ; but questions also 
are stopped. No one allows a duty to be imposed upon him 
without rendering to himself a reason for it ; but as soon as it is 
recognized that this duty is imposed upon us because it is just, 
the mind is satisfied ; for it reaches a principle beyond which it 
has nothing more to seek, justice being its own principle. First 
truths carry with them their reason for being. Now, justice, the 
essential distinction between good and evil in the relations of men 
among themselves, is the primary truth of ethics. 

Justice is not a consequence, since we cannot ascend to another 
more elevated principle ; and duty is not, rigorously speaking, a 
principle, since it supposes a principle above it, that explains and 
authorizes it, to wit, justice. 

Moral truth no more becomes relative and subjective, to take 
for a moment the language of Kant, in appearing to us obliga- 
tory, than truth becomes relative and subjective in appearing to 
us necessary ; for in the very nature of truth and the good must 
be sought the reason of necessity and obligation. But if we stop 
at obligation and necessity, as Kant did, in ethics as well as in 
metaphysics, without knowing it, and even against our intention, 
we destroy, or at least weaken truth and the good. 1 

Obligation has its foundation in the necessary distinction be- 
tween good and evil ; and is itself the foundation of liberty. If 

1 1st part, lecture 3. See also vol. v. of the 1st Series, lecture 8. 



286 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

man has duties, he must possess the faculty of fulfilling them, of 
resisting desire, passion, and interest, in order to obey law. He 
ought to be free, therefore he is free, or human nature is in con- 
tradiction with itself. The direct certainty of obligation implies 
the corresponding certainty of liberty. 

This proof of liberty is doubtless good ; but Kant is deceived 
in supposing it the only legitimate proof. It is very strange that 
he should have preferred the authority of reasoning to that of 
consciousness, as if the former had no need of being confirmed 
by the latter ; as if, after all, my liberty ought not to be a fact 
for me. 1 Empiricism must be greatly feared to distrust the testi- 
mony of consciousness ; and, after such a distrust, one must be 
very credulous to have a boundless faith in reasoning. We do 
not believe in our liberty as we believe in the movement of the 
earth. The profoundest persuasion that we have of it comes 
from the continual experience that we carry with ourselves. 

Is it true that in presence of an act to be done I am able 
to will or not to will to do it? In that lies the whole question of 
liberty. 

Let us clearly distinguish between the power of doing and the 
power of willing. The will has, without doubt, in its service and 
under its empire, the most of our faculties ; but that empire, which 
is real, is very limited. I will to move my arm, and I am often 
able to do it, — in that resides, as it were, the physical power of 
will ; but I am not always able to move my arm, if the muscles 
are paralyzed, if the obstacle to be overcome is too strong, &c. ; 
the execution does not always depend on me ; but what always 
depends on me is the resolution itself. The external effects may 
be hindered, my resolution itself can never be hindered. In its 
own domain, will is sovereign. 

And I am conscious of this sovereign power of the will. I feel 
in myself, before its determination, the force that can determine 
itself in such a manner or in such another. At the same time 

1 1st Series, vol. v., lecture 7. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 287 

that I will this or that, I am equally conscious of the power to 
will the opposite ; I am conscious of being master of my resolu- 
tion, of the ability to arrest it, continue it, repress it. When the 
voluntary act ceases, the consciousness of the power does not 
cease, — it remains with the power itself, which is superior to all 
its manifestations. Liberty is therefore the essential and always- 
subsisting attribute of will. 1 

The will, we have seen, 2 is neither desire nor passion, — it is 
exactly the opposite. Liberty of will is not, then, the license of 
desires and passions. Man is a slave in desire and passion, he is 
free only in will. That they may not elsewhere be confounded, 
liberty and anarchy must not be confounded in psychology. Pas- 
sions abandoning themselves to their caprices, is anarchy. Pas- 
sions concentrated upon a dominant passion, is tyranny. Liberty 
consists in the struggle of will against this tyranny and this anar- 
chy. But this combat must have an aim, and this aim is the 
duty of obeying reason, which is our true sovereign, and justice, 
which reason reveals to us and prescribes for us. The duty of 
obeying reason is the law of will, and will is never more itself 
than when it submits to its law. We do not possess ourselves, 
as long as to the domination of desire, of passion, of interest, reason 
does not oppose the counterpoise of justice. Reason and justice 
free us from the yoke of passions, without imposing upon us 
another yoke. For, once more, to obey them, is not to abdicate 
liberty, but to save it, to apply it to its legitimate use. 

It is in liberty, and in the agreement of liberty with reason 
and justice, that man belongs to himself, to speak properly. He 
is a person only because he is a free being enlightened by reason. 

What distinguishes a person from a simple thing, is especially 
the difference between liberty and its opposite. A thing is 



1 See, for the entire development of the theory of liberty, 1st Series, vol. 
iii., lecture 1, Zoclce, p. 71; lecture 3, Condillac, p. 116, 149, etc.; vol. iv., 
lecture 23, Beid, p. 541-574; 2d Series, vol. iii., Examination of the System 
of Zocke, lecture 25. 

2 Lecture 12. 



288 LECTUEE FOURTEENTH. 

that which is not free, consequently that which does not belong 
to itself, that which has no self, which has only a numerical 
individuality, a perfect effigy of true individuality, which is that 
of person. 

A thing, not belonging to itself, belongs to the first person that 
takes possession of it and puts his mark on it. 

A thing is not responsible for the movements which it has not 
willed, of which it is even ignorant. Person alone is responsible, 
for it is intelligent and free ; and it is responsible for the use of its 
intelligence and freedom. 

A thing has no dignity ; dignity is only attached to person. 

A thing has no value by itself; it has only that which per- 
son confers on it. It is purely an instrument whose whole value 
consists in the use that the person using it derives from it. 1 

Obligation implies liberty ; where liberty is not, duty is want- 
ing, and with duty right is wanting also. 

It is because there is in me a being worthy of respect, that I 
have the duty of respecting it, and the right to make it respected 
by you. My duty is the exact measure of my right. The one 
is in direct ratio with the other. If I had no sacred duty to re- 
spect what makes my person, that is to say, my intelligence and 
my liberty, I should not have the right to defend it against your 
injuries. But as my person is inviolable and sacred in itself, 
it follows that, considered in relation to me, it imposes on me 
a duty, and, considered in relation to you, it confers on me a 
right. 

I am not myself permitted to degrade the person that I am by 
abandoning myself to passion, to vice and crime, and I am not 
permitted to let it be degraded by you. 

The person is inviolable ; and it alone is inviolable. 

It is inviolable not only in the intimate sanctuary of conscious- 
ness, but in all its legitimate manifestations, in its acts, in the 



1 See 1st Series, vol. iv., Lecture on Smith and on the true principle of 
political economy, p. 278-802. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 289 

product of its acts, even in the instruments that it makes its own 
by using them. 

Therein is the foundation of the sanctity of property. The first 
property is the person. All other properties are derived from 
that. Think of it well. It is not property in itself that has 
rights, it is the proprietor, it is the person that stamps upon it, 
with its own character, its right and its title. 

The person cannot cease to belong to itself, without degrading 
itself, — it is to itself inalienable. The person has no right over 
itself; it cannot treat itself as a thing, cannot sell itself, cannot 
destroy itself, cannot in any way abolish its free will and its lib- 
erty, which are its constituent elements. 

"Why has the child already some rights ? Because it will be a 
free being. Why have the old man, returned to infancy, and the 
insane man still some rights ? Because they have been free 
beings. We even respect liberty in its first glimmerings or its 
last vestiges. Why, on the other hand, have the insane man and 
the imbecile old man no longer all their rights ? Because they 
have lost liberty. Why do we enchain the furious madman ? 
Because he has lost knowledge and liberty. Why is slavery an 
abominable institution? Because it is an outrage upon what 
constitutes humanity. This is the reason why, in fine, certain 
extreme devotions are sometimes sublime faults, and no one is 
permitted to offer them, much less to demand them. There is no 
legitimate devotion against the very essence of right, against lib- 
erty, against justice, against the dignity of the human person. 

We have not been able to speak 'of liberty, without indicating 
a certain number of moral notions of the highest importance 
which it contains and explains ; but we could not pursue this de- 
velopment without encroaching upon the domain of private and 
public ethics and anticipating the following lecture. 

We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phenomenon, 
the judgment of merit and demerit. 

At the same time that we judge that a man has done a good 
or bad action, we bear this other judgment quite as necessary as 

13 



290 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

the former, to wit, that if this man has acted well he has merited 
a reward, and if he has acted ill, he has merited a punishment. 
It is exactly the same with this judgment as with that of the 
good. It may be outwardly expressed in a more or less lively 
manner, according as it is mingled with more or less energetic 
feelings. Sometimes it will be only a benevolent disposition 
towards the virtuous agent, and an unfavorable disposition towards 
the culpable agent ; sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indigna- 
tion. In some cases one will make himself the executor of the 
judgment that he bears, he will crown the hero and load the 
criminal with chains. But when all your feelings are calmed, 
when enthusiasm has cooled as well as indignation, when time 
and separation have rendered an action almost indifferent to you, 
you none the less persist in judging that the author of this action 
merits a reward or a punishment, according to the quality of the 
action. You decide that you were right in the sentiments that 
you felt, and, although they are extinguished, you declare them 
legitimate. 

The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to the 
judgment of good and evil. In fact, he who does an action with- 
out knowing whether it is good or bad, has neither merit nor 
demerit in doing it. It is with him the same as with those 
physical agents that accomplish the most beneficent or the most 
destructive works, to which we never think of attributing knowl- 
edge and will, consequently accountability. Why are there no 
penalties attached to involuntary crimes? Because for that very 
reason they are not regarded as crimes. Hence it comes that the 
question of premeditation is so grave in all criminal processes. 
Why is the child, up to a certain age, subject to none but light 
punishments ? Because where the idea of the good and liberty 
are wanting, merit and demerit are also wanting, which alone 
authorize reward and punishment. The author of an injurious 
but involuntary action is condemned to an indemnity correspond- 
ing to the damage done ; he is not condemned to a punishment 
properly so called. 



TKUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 291 

Such are the conditions of merit and demerit. When these 
conditions are fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest themselves, 
and involve reward and punishment. 

Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded ; demerit 
the natural right that others have to. punish us, and, if we may 
thus speak, the right that we have to be punished. This expres- 
sion may seem paradoxical, nevertheless it is true. A culpable 
man, who, opening his eyes to the light of the good, should com- 
prehend the necessity of expiation, not only by internal repent- 
ance, without which all the rest is in vain, but also by a real and 
effective suffering, such a culpable man would have the right to 
claim the punishment that alone can reconcile him with order. 
And such reclamations are not so rare. Do we not every day see 
criminals denouncing themselves and offering themselves up to 
avenge the public ? Others prefer to satisfy justice, and do not 
have recourse to the pardon that law places in the hands of the 
monarch in order to represent in the state charity and mercy, as 
tribunals represent in it justice. This is a manifest proof of the 
natural and profound roots of the idea of punishment and reward. 

Merit and demerit imperatively claim, like a lawful debt, pun- 
ishment and reward ; but reward must not be confounded with 
merit, nor punishment with demerit ; this would be confounding 
cause and effect, principle and consequence. Even were reward 
and punishment not to take place, merit and demerit would sub- 
sist. Punishment and reward satisfy merit and demerit, but do 
not constitute them. Suppress all reward and all punishment, 
and you do not thereby suppress merit and demerit; on the con- 
trary, suppress merit and demerit, and there are no longer true 
punishments and true rewards. Unmerited goods and honors are 
only material advantages ; reward is essentially moral, and its 
value is independent of its form. One of those crowns of oak 
that the early Romans decreed to heroism is worth more than all 
the riches in the world, when it is the sign of the recognition and 
the admiration of a people. To reward is to give in return. He 
who is rewarded must have first {riven something in order to de- 



292 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

serve to be rewarded. Reward accorded to merit is a debt ; re- 
ward without merit is a charity or a theft. It is the same with 
punishment. It is the relation of pain to a fault, — in this rela- 
tion, and not in the pain alone, is the truth as well as the shame 
of chastisement. 

'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame. 1 

There are two things that must be unceasingly repeated, be- 
cause they are equally true, — the first is, that the good is good 
in itself, and ought to be pursued whatever may be the conse- 
quences ; the second is, that the consequences of the good cannot 
fail to be fortunate. Happiness, separated from the good, is only 
a fact to which is attached no moral idea ; but, as an effect of the 
good, it enters into the moral order and completes it. 

Virtue without happiness, and crime without unhappiness, are 
a contradiction, a disorder. If virtue supposes sacrifice, that is to 
say, suffering, it is of eternal justice that the sacrifice, generously 
accepted and courageously borne, have for a reward the very 
happiness that has been sacrificed. So, it is of eternal justice 
that crime be punished by the unhappiness of the culpable hap- 
piness which it has tried to obtain by stealth. 

Now, when and how is the law fulfilled that attaches pleasure 
and pain to good and evil ? Most of the time even here below. 
For order rules in this world, since the world endures. If order 
is sometimes disturbed, and happiness and unhappiness are not 
always distributed in right proportion to crime and virtue, still 
the absolute judgment of the good, the absolute judgment of ob- 
ligation, the absolute judgment of merit and demerit, subsist 
inviolable and imprescriptible, — we remain convinced that he who 
has put in us the sentiment and the idea of order cannot in that 
fail himself, and that sooner or later he will re-establish the sacred 
harmony between virtue and happiness by the means that to him 
belong. But the time has not come to sound these mysterious 

1 Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'echafaud. 



LRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 293 

prospects. 1 It is sufficient for us, but it was necessary to mr.rk 
them, in order to show the nature and the end of moral truth. 

We terminate this analysis of the different parts of the com- 
plex phenomenon of morality by recalling that one which is the 
most apparent of all, which, however, is only the accompaniment, 
and, thus to speak, the echo of all the others — sentiment. Senti- 
ment has for its object to render sensible to the soul the tie be- 
tween virtue and happiness. It is the direct and vital application 
of the law of merit and demerit. It precedes and authorizes the 
punishments and rewards that society institutes. It is the inter- 
nal model according to which the imagination, guided by faith, 
represents to itself the punishments and rewards of the divine city. 
The world that we place beyond this is, in great part, our own 
heart transported into heaven. Since it comes thence, it is just 
that it should return thither. 

We will not dwell upon the different phenomena of sentiment ; 
we have sufficiently explained them in the last lecture. A few 
words will replace them under your eyes. 

We cannot witness a good action, whoever may be its author, 
another or ourselves, without experiencing a particular pleasure, 
analogous to that which is attached to the perception of the 
beautiful ; and we cannot witness a bad action without feeling a 
contrary sentiment, also analogous to that which the sight of an 
ugly and deformed object excites in us. This sentiment is pro- 
foundly different from agreeable or disagreeable sensation. 

Are we the authors of the good action ? We feel a satisfac- 
tion that we do not confound with any other. It is not the 
triumph of interest nor that of pride, — it is the pleasure of modest 
honesty or dignified virtue that renders justice to itself. Are we 
the authors of the bad action ? We feel offended conscience 
groaning within us. Sometimes it is only an importunate rec- 
lamation, sometimes it is a bitter a won v. Remorse is a suffering 
the more poignant on account of our feeling that it is deserved. 

1 See lecture 16, God, the Principle of the Idea of the Good. 



294 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

The spectacle of a good action done by another also has some- 
thing delicious to the soul. Sympathy is an echo in us that re- 
sponds to whatever is noble and good in others. When interest 
does not lead us astray, we naturally put ourselves in the place of 
him who has done well. We feel in a certain measure the senti- 
ments that animate him. We elevate ourselves to the mood of 
his spirit. Is it not already for the good man an exquisite re- 
ward to make the noble sentiments that animate him thus pass 
into the hearts of his fellow-men ? The spectacle of a bad action, 
instead of sympathy, excites an involuntary antipathy, a painful 
and sad sentiment. Without doubt, this sentiment is never acute 
like remorse. There is in innocence something serene and placid 
that tempers even the sentiment of injustice, even when this in- 
justice falls on us. We then experience a sort of shame for 
humanity, we mourn over human weakness, and, by a melan- 
choly return upon ourselves, we are less moved to anger than to 
pity. Sometimes also pity is overcome by a generous anger, by 
a disinterested indignation. If, as we have said, it is a sweet re- 
ward to excite a noble sympathy, an enthusiasm almost always 
fertile in good actions, it is a cruel punishment to stir up around 
us pity, indignation, aversion, and contempt. 

Sympathy for a good action is accompanied by benevolence 
for its author. He inspires us with an affectionate disposition. 
Even without knowing it, we would love to do good to him ; we 
desire that he may be happy, because we judge that he deserves 
to be. Antipathy also passes from the action to the person, and 
engenders against him a sort of bad will, for which we do not 
blame ourselves, because we feel it to be disinterested and find it 
legitimate. 

Moral satisfaction and remorse, sympathy, benevolence, and 
their opposites are sentiments and not judgments ; but they are 
sentiments that accompany judgments, the judgment of the good, 
especially that of merit and demerit. These sentiments have 
been given us by the sovereign Author of our moral constitution 
to aid us in doing good. In their diversity and mobility, they 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 295 

cannot be the foundations of absolute obligation which must be 
equal for all, but they are to it happy auxiliaries, sure and benefi- 
cent witnesses of the harmony between virtue and happiness. 

These are the facts as presented by a faithful description, as 
brought to light by a detailed analysis. 

Without facts all is chimera ; without a severe distinction of 
facts, all is confusion ; but, also, without the kDowledge of their 
relations, instead of a single vast doctrine, like the total phenome- 
non that we have undertaken to embrace, there can be only dif- 
ferent systems like the different parts of this phenomenon, conse- 
quently imperfect systems, systems always at war with each 
other. 

We set out from common sense ; for the object of true science 
is not to contradict common sense, but to explain it, and for this 
end we must commence by recogniziog it. We have at first 
painted in its simplicity, even in the gross, the phenomenon of 
morality. Then we have separated its elements, and carefully 
marked the characteristic traits of each of them. It only remains 
for us to re-collect them all, to seize their relations, and thus to 
find again, but more precise and more clear, the primitive unity 
that served us as a point of departure. 

Beneath all facts analysis has shown us a primitive fact, which 
rests only on itself, — the judgment of the good. We do not 
sacrifice other facts to that, but we must establish that it is the 
first both in date and in importance. 

By its close resemblance to the judgment of the true and the 
beautiful, the judgment of the good has shown us the affinities of 
ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics. 

The good, so essentially united to the true, is distinguished 
from it in that it is practical truth. The good is obligatory. 
These two ideas are inseparable, but not identical. For obliga- 
tion rests on the good, — in this intimate alliance, from the good 
obligation borrows its universal and absolute character. 

The obligatory good is the moral law. Therein is for us the 
foundation of all ethics. Thereby it is that we separate our>elves 



296 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

from the ethics of interest and the ethics of sentiment. We ad- 
mit all the facts, but we do not admit them in the same rank. 

To the moral law in the reason of man corresponds liberty in 
action. Liberty is deduced from obligation, and moreover it is a 
fact of an irresistible evidence. 

Man as a being free and subject to obligation, is a moral per- 
son. The idea of person contains several moral notions, among 
others that of right. Person alone can have rights. 

To all these ideas is added that of merit and demerit, which 
serves as their sanction. 

Merit and demerit suppose the distinction between good and 
evil, obligation and liberty, and give birth to the idea of reward 
and punishment. 

It is on the condition that the good may be an object of reason, 
that ethics can have an immovable basis. We have therefore 
insisted on the rational character of the idea of the good, but 
without misconceiving the part of sentiment. 

We have distinguished that particular sensibility, which is 
stirred in us in the train of reason itself, from physical sensibility, 
which needs an impression made upon the organs in order to en- 
ter into exercise. 

All our moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that 
respond to them. The sight of an action which we judge to be 
good gives us pleasure, — the consciousness of having performed 
an obligatory act, and of having performed it freely, is also a 
pleasure; the judgment of merit and demerit makes our hearts 
beat by taking the form of sympathy and benevolence. 

It must be avowed that the law of duty, although it ought to 
be fulfilled for its own sake, would be an ideal almost inaccessible 
to human weakness, if to its austere prescriptions were not added 
some inspiration of the heart. Sentiment is in some sort a nat- 
ural grace that has been given us, either to supply the light of 
reason that is sometimes uncertain, or to succor the will wavering 
in the presence of an obscure or painful duty. In order to resist 
the violence of culpable passions, the aid of generous passions is 



TEUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 297 

needed ; and when the moral law exacts the sacrifice of natural 
sentiments, of the sweetest and most lively instincts, it is fortunate 
that it can support itself on other sentiments, or other instincts 
which also have their charm and their force. Truth enlightens 
the mind ; sentiment warms the soul and leads to action. It is 
not cold reason that determines a Codrus to devote himself for his 
countrymen, a d'Assas to utter, beneath the steel of the enemy, 
the generous cry that brings him death and saves the army. Let 
us guard ourselves, then, from weakening the authority of senti- 
ment ; let us honor and sustain enthusiasm ; it is the source 
whence spring great and heroic actions. 

And shall interest be entirely banished from our system ? No ; 
we recognize in the human soul a desire for happiness which is 
the work of God himself. This desire is a fact, — it must then 
have its place in a system founded upon experience. Happiness 
is one of the ends of human nature ; only it is neither its sole 
end nor its principal end. 

Admirable economy of the moral constitution of man ! Its 
supreme end is the good, its law is virtue, which often imposes 
on it suffering, and thereby it is the most excellent of all things 
that we know. But this law is very hard and in contradiction 
with the instinct of happiness. Fear nothing, — the beneficent 
author of our being has placed in our souls, by the side of the 
severe law of duty, the sweet and amiable force of sentiment, — 
he has, in general, attached happiness to virtue ; and, for the ex- 
ceptions, for there are exceptions, at the end of the course he has 
placed hope. 1 

Our doctrine is now known. Its only pretension is to express 
faithfully each fact, to express them all, and to make appear at 
once their differences and their harmony. 

Beyond that there is nothing new to attempt in ethics. To 
admit only a single fact and to sacrifice to that all the rest, — such 
is the beaten way. Of all the facts that we have just analyzed, 

1 See lecture 16. 

13* 



298 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

there is not one that has not in its turn played the part of sole 
principle. All the great schools of moral philosophy have each 
seen only one side of truth, — fortunate when they have not 
chosen among the different phases of the moral phenomenon, in 
order to found upon them their entire system, precisely those 
that are least adapted to that end ! 

Who could now return to Epicurus, and, against the most 
manifest facts, against common sense, against the very idea of all 
ethics, found duty, virtue, the good, on the desire of happiness 
alone ? It would be proof of great blindness and great barren- 
ness. On the other hand,- shall we immolate the need of happi- 
ness, the hope of all reward, human or divine, to the abstract 
idea of the good ? The Stoics have done it, — we know with what 
apparent grandeur, with what real impotence. Shall we confine 
with Kant the whole of ethics to obligation ? That is straitening 
still more a system that is already very narrow. Moreover, one 
may hope to surpass Kant in extent of views, by a completer 
knowledge and more faithful representation of facts ; one cannot 
hope to be more profound in the point of view that he has 
chosen. Or, in another order of ideas, shall we refer to the will 
of God alone the obligation of virtue, and found ethics on religion, 
instead of giving religion to ethics as their necessary perfection ? 
We still invent nothing new, we only renew the ethics of the 
theologians of the Middle Age, or rather of a particular school 
which has had for its adversaries the most illustrious doctors. 
Finally, shall we reduce all morality' to sentiment, to sympathy, 
to benevolence ? It only remains to follow the footsteps of Hutch- 
eson and Smith, abandoned by Reid himself, or the footsteps of 
a celebrated adversary of Kant, Jacobi. 1 

The time of exclusive theories has gone by ; to renew Iheni is 
to perpetuate war in philosophy. Each of them, being founded 
upon a real fact, rightly refuses the sacrifice of this fact ; and it 



1 On Jacobi, see Tennemann's Manual of the History of Philosophy, vol. 
iii., p. 318, etc. 



TRUE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 299 

meets in hostile theories an equal right and an equal resistance. 
Hence the perpetual return of the same systems, always at war 
with each other, and by turns vanquished and victorious. This 
strife can cease only by means of a doctrine that conciliates all 
systems by comprising all the facts that give them authority. 

It is not the preconceived design of conciliating systems in his- 
tory that suggests to us the idea of conciliating facts in reality. 
It is, on the contrary, the full possession of all the facts, analogous 
and different, that forces us to absolve and condemn all systems 
on account of the truth that is in each of them, and on account 
of the errors that are mixed with the truth. 

It is important to repeat continually, that nothing is so easy as 
to arrange a system, by suppressing or altering the facts that em- 
barrass it. But is it, then, the object of philosophy to produce 
at any cost a system, instead of seeking to understand the truth 
and express it as it is ? 

It is objected that such a doctrine has not sufficient character. 
But is it not sporting with philosophy to demand of it any other 
character than that of truth ? Do men complain that modern 
chemistry has not sufficient character, because it limits itself to 
studying facts in their relations, and also in their differences, and 
because it does not end at a single substance ? The only true 
philosophy that is proper for a century returned from all exag- 
gerations, is a picture of human nature whose first merit is fidel- 
ity, which must offer all the traits of the original in their right 
proportion and real harmony. The unity of the doctrine that 
we profess is in that of the human soul, whence we have drawn 
it. Is it not one and the same being that perceives the good, 
that knows that he is obligated to fulfil it, that knows that he is 
free in fulfilling it, that loves the good, and judges that the fulfil- 
ment or violation of the good justly brings after it reward or 
punishment, happiness or misery? We draw, then, a true unity 
from the intimate relation between all the facts that, as we have 
seen, imply and sustain each other. But by what right is the 
unity of a doctrine placed in allowing in it only a single princi- 



300 LECTURE FOURTEENTH. 

pie ? Such a unity is possible only in those regions of mathe- 
matical abstraction, where one is not disturbed by what is, where 
one retrenches at will from the object that he is studying, in order 
to simplify it continually, where every thing is reduced to pure 
notions. In the reality all is determined, and consequently, all 
is complex. A science of facts is not a series of equations. In 
it must be found again the life that is in things, life with its har- 
mony doubtless, but also with its richness and diversity. 1 

1 On this important question of method, see lecture 12. 



LECTUEE XV. 

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 

Application of the preceding principles. — General formula of interest, — to 
obey reason. — Rule for judging whether an action is or is not conformed 
to reason, — to elevate the motive of this action into a maxim of universal 
legislation. — Individual ethics. It is not towards the individual, but 
towards the moral person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual 
duties, — to respect and develop the moral person. — Social ethics, — duties 
of justice and duties of charity. — Civil society. Government. Law. The 
right to punish. 

We know that there is moral good and that there is moral 
evil : we know that this distinction between good and evil 
engenders an obligation, a law, duty ; but we do not yet know 
what our duties are. The general principle of ethics is laid 
down ; it must be followed at least into its most important 
applications. 

If duty is only truth become obligatory, and if truth is known 
only by reason, to obey, the law of duty, is to obey reason. 

But to obey reason is a precept very vague and very abstract : 
— how can we be sure that our action is conformed or is not con- 
formed to reason ? 

The character of reason being, as we have said, its universality, 
action, in order to be conformed to reason, must possess some- 
thing universal ; and as it is the motive itself of the action that 
gives it its morality, it is also the motive that must, if the action 
is good, reflect the character of reason. By what sign, then, do 
you recognize that an action is conformed to reason, that it is 
good ? By the sign that the motive of this action being general- 
ized, appears to you a maxim of universal legislation, which 



302 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

reason imposes upon all intelligent and free beings. If you are 
not able thus to generalize the motive of an action, and if it is the 
opposite motive that appears to you a universal maxim, your 
action, being opposed to this maxim, is thereby proved to be con- 
trary to reason and duty, — it is bad. If neither the motive of 
your action nor the motive of the opposite action can be erected 
into a universal law, the action is neither good nor bad, it is in- 
different. Such is the ingenious measure that Kant has applied 
to the morality of actions. It makes known with the last degree 
of clearness where duty is and where it is not, as the severe and 
naked form of syllogism, being applied to reasoning, brings out 
in the precisest manner its error or its truth. 

To obey reason, — such is duty in itself, the duty superior* to all 
other duties, giving to all others their foundation, and being 
itself founded only on the essential relation between liberty and 
reason. 

It may be said that there is only a single duty, that of obeying 
reason. But man having different relations, this single and gen- 
eral duty is determined by these different relations, and divided 
into a corresponding number of particular duties. 

Of all the beings that we know, there is not one with whom 
we are more constantly in relation than with ourselves. The ac- 
tions of which man is at once the author and the object, have 
rules as well as other actions. Hence that first class of duties 
which are called the duties of man towards himself. 

At first sight, it is strange that man should have duties towards 
himself. Man, being free, belongs to himself. What is most to 
me is myself: — this is the first property and the foundation of all 
other properties. Now, is it not the essence of property to be at 
the free disposition of the proprietor, and consequently, am I not 
able to do with myself what I please ? 

No ; from the fact that man is free, from the foct that he be- 
longs only to himself, it must not be concluded that he has over 
himself all power. On the contrary, indeed, from the fact alone 
that he is endowed with liberty, as well as intelligence, I conclude 



PEIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 303 

that lie can no more degrade his liberty than his intelligence, 
without transgressing. It is a culpable use of liberty to abdicate 
it. We have said that liberty is not only sacred to others, but is 
so to itself. To subject it to the yoke of passion, instead of in- 
creasing it under the liberal discipline of duty, is to abase in us 
what deserves our respect as much as the respect of others. Man 
is not a thing ; it has not, then, been permitted him to treat him- 
self as a thing. 

If I have duties towards myself, it is not towards myself as an 
individual, it is towards the liberty and intelligence that make 
me a free moral person. It is necessary to distinguish closely in 
us what is peculiar to us from what pertains to humanity. Each 
one of us contains in himself human nature with all its essential 
elements ; and, in addition, all these elements are in him in a 
certain manner that is not the same in two different men. These 
particularities make the individual, but not the person ; and the 
person alone in us is to be respected and held as sacred, because 
it alone represents humanity. Every thing that does not concern 
the moral person is indifferent. In these limits I may consult my 
tastes, even my fancies to a certain extent, because in them there 
is nothing absolute, because in them good and evil are in no way 
involved. But as soon as an act touches the moral person, my 
liberty is subjected to its law, to reason, which does not allow 
liberty to be turned against itself. For example, if through ca- 
price, or melancholy, or any other motive, I condemn myself to 
an abstinence too prolonged, if I impose on myself vigils pro- 
tracted and beyond my strength ; if I absolutely renounce all 
pleasure, and, by these excessive privations, endanger my health, 
my life, my reason, these are no longer indifferent actions. Sick- 
ness, death, madness, may become crimes, if we voluntarily bring 
them upon ourselves. 

I have not established this obligation of self-respect imposed 
on the moral person, therefore I cannot destroy it. Is self-respect 
founded on one of those arbitrary conventions that cease to exist 
when the two contracting parties freely renounce them ? Are the 



304 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

two contracting parties here me and myself? By no means ; one 
of the contracting parties is not me, to wit, humanity, the moral 
person. And there is here neither convention nor contract. By 
the fact alone that the moral person is in us, we are obligated 
towards it, without convention of any sort, without contract that 
can be cancelled, and by the very nature of things.. Hence it 
comes that obligation is absolute. 

Respect of the moral person in us is the general principle 
whence are derived all individual duties. We will cite some of 
them. 

The most important, that which governs all others, is the duty 
of remaining master of one's self. One may lose possession of 
himself in two ways, either by allowing himself to be carried 
away, or by allowing himself to be overcome, by yielding to 
enervating passions or to overwhelming passions, to anger or to 
melancholy. On either hand there is equal weakness. And I 
do not speak of the consequences of those vices for society and 
ourselves, — certainly they are very injurious ; but they are much 
worse than that, they are already bad in themselves, because in 
themselves they give a blow to moral dignity, because they dimin- 
ish liberty and disturb intelligence. 

Prudence is an eminent virtue. I speak of that noble pru- 
dence that is the moderation in all things, the foresight, the fit- 
ness, that preserve at once from negligence and that rashness 
which adorns itself with the name of heroism, as cowardice and 
selfishness sometimes usurp the name of prudence. Heroism, 
without being premeditated, ought always to be rational. One 
may be a hero at intervals ; but, in every-day life, it is sufficient 
to be a wise man. We must ourselves hold the reins of our life, 
and not prepare difficulties for ourselves by carelessness or bra- 
vado, nor create for ourselves useless perils. Doubtless we must 
know how to dare, but still prudence is, if not the principle, at 
least the rule of courage ; for true courage is not a blind transport, 
it is before all coolness and self-possession in danger. Prudence 
also teaches temperance ; it keeps the soul in that state of mod- 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 305 

eration without which man is incapable of recognizing and prac- 
tising justice. This is the reason why the ancients said that pru- 
dence is the mother and guardian of all the virtues. Prudence 
is the government of liberty by reason, as imprudence is liberty 
escaped from reason : — on the one side, order, the legitimate sub- 
ordination of our faculties to each other ; on the other, anarchy 
and revolt. 1 

Veracity is also a great virtue. Falsehood, by breaking the 
natural alliance between man and truth, deprives him of that 
which makes his dignity. This is the reason why there is no 
graver insult than giving the lie, and why the most honored vir- 
tues are sincerity and frankness. 

One may degrade the moral person by wounding it in its in- 
struments. For this reason the body is to man the object of im- 
perative duties. The body may become an obstacle or a means. 
If you refuse it what sustains and strengthens it, or if you demand 
too much from it by exciting it beyond measure, you exhaust it, 
and by abusing it, deprive yourself of it. It is worse still if you 
pamper it, if you grant every thing to its unbridled desires, if you 
mal^e yourself its slave. It is being unfaithful to the soul to en- 
feeble its servant ; it is being much more unfaithful to it still, to 
enslave it to its servant. 

But it is not enough to respect the moral person, it is neces- 
sary to perfect it ; it is necessary to labor to return the soul to 
God better than we received it ; and it can become so only by a 
constant and courageous exercise. Everywhere in nature, all 
things are spontaneously developed, without willing it, and with- 
out knowing it. With man, if the will slumbers, the other facul- 
ties degenerate into languor and inertion ; or, carried away by 
the blind impulse of passion, they are precipitated and go 
astray. It is by the government and education of himself that 
man is great. 

Man must, before every thing else, occupy himself with his 

1 See the Republic, book iv., vol. ix., of our translation. 



306 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

intelligence. It is in fact our intelligence that alone can give us 
a clear sight of the true and the good, that guides liberty by 
showing it the legitimate object of its efforts. No one can give 
himself another mind than the one that he has received, but he 
may train and strengthen it as well as the body, by putting it to 
a task of some kind, by rousing it when it is drowsy, by restrain- 
ing it when it is carried away, by continually proposing to it new 
objects, — for it is only by continually enriching it that it does 
not grow poor. Sloth benumbs and enervates the mind ; reg- 
ular work excites and strengthens it, and work is always in our 
power. 

There is an education of liberty as well as our other faculties. 
It is sometimes in subduing the body, sometimes in governing 
our intelligence, especially in resisting our passions, that we learn 
to be free. We encounter opposition at each step, — the only 
question is not to shun it. In this constant struggle liberty is 
formed and augmented, until it becomes a habit. 

Finally, there is a culture of sensibility itself. Fortunate are 
those who have received from nature the sacred fire of enthusi- 
asm! They ought religiously to preserve it. But there is no 
soul that does not conceal some fortunate vein of it. It is neces- 
sary to watch it and pursue, to avoid what restrains it, to seek 
what favors it, and, by an assiduous culture, draw from it, little 
by little, some treasures. If we cannot give ourselves sensibility, 
we can at least develop what we have. We can do this by giv- 
ing ourselves up to it, by seizing all the occasions of giving 
ourselves up to it, by calling to its aid intelligence itself; for, 
the more we know of the beautiful and the good, the more 
we love it. Sentiment thereby only borrows from intelligence 
what it returns with usury. Intelligence in its turn finds, in 
the heart, a rampart against sophism. Noble sentiments, nour- 
ished and developed, preserve from those sad systems that 
please certain spirits so much only because their hearts are so 
small. 

Man would still have duties, should he cease to be in relation 



PRIVATE AMD PUBLIC ETHICS. 307 

with other men. 1 As long as he preserves any intelligence and any 
liberty, the idea of the good dwells in him, and with it duty. 
Were we cast upon a desert island, duty would follow us thither. 
It would be beyond belief strange that it should be in the power 



1 Ou our principal duties towards ourselves, and on that error, too much 
accredited in the eighteenth century, of reducing ethics to our duties towards 
others, see 1st Series, vol. iii., lectures on the ethics of Helvetius and Saint- 
Lambert, lecture vi., p. 235 : " To define virtue an habitual disposition to con- 
tribute to the happiness of others, is to concentrate virtue into a single one 
of its applications, is to suppress its general and essential character. Therein 
is the fundamental vice of the ethics of the eighteenth century. Those 
ethics are an exaggerated reaction against the somewhat mystical ethics of 
the preceding age, which, rightly occupied with perfecting the internal man, 
often fell into asceticism, which is not only useless to others, but is contrary to 
well-ordered human life. Through fear of asceticism, the philosophy of the 
eighteenth century forgot the care of internal perfection, and only considered 
the virtues useful to society. That was retrenching many virtues, and the 
best ones. I take, for example, dominion over self. How make a virtue of 
it, when virtue is defined a disposition to contribute to the happiness of others f 
Will it be said that dominion over self is useful to others ? But that is not 
always true ; often this dominion is exercised in the solitude of the soul over 
internal and wholly personal movements ; and there it is most painful and 
most sublime. "Were we in a desert, it would still be for us a duty to resist 
our passions, to command ourselves, and to govern our life as it becomes a 
rational and free being. Beneficence is an adorable virtue, but it is neither 
the whole of virtue, nor its most difiicult employment. What auxiliaries we 
have when the question is to do good to our fellow-creatures, — pity, sympa- 
thy, natural benevolence ! But to resist pride and envy, to combat in the 
depths of the soul a natural desire legitimate in itself, often culpable in its 
excesses, to suffer and struggle in silence, is the hardest task of a virtuous 
man. I add that the virtues useful to others have their surest guaranty in 
those personal virtues that the eighteenth century misconceived. What are 
goodness, generosity, and beneficence without dominion over self without 
the form of soul attached to the religious observance of duty \ Tbey are, 
perhaps, only the emotions of a beautiful nature placed in fortunate circum- 
stances. Take away these circumstances, and, perhaps, the effects will dis- 
appear or be diminished. But when a man, who knows himself to be a 
rational and free being, comprehends that it is his duty to remain faithful to 
liberty and reason, when he applies himself to govern himself, and pursue, 
without cessation, the perfection of his nature through all circumstances, 
you may rely upon that man ; he will know how. in case of need, to be useful 
to others, because there is no true perfection for him without justice and 
charity. From the care of internal perfection you may draw all the useful 
virtues, but the reciprocal is not always true. One may be beneficent with- 
out beina: virtuous ; one is not virtuous without being beneficent.'' 



308 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

of certain external circumstances to affranchise an intelligent and 
free being from all obligation towards his liberty and his intelli- 
gence. In the deepest solitude he is always and consciously 
under the empire of a law attached to the person itself, which, by 
obligating him to keep continual watch over himself, makes at 
once his torment and his grandeur. 

If the moral person is sacred to me, it is not because it is in 
me, it is because it is the moral person ; it is in itself respectable ; 
it will be so, then, wherever we meet it. 

It is in you as in me, and for the same reason. In relation 
to me it imposes on me a duty ; in you it becomes the founda- 
tion of a right, and thereby imposes on me a new duty in relation 
to you. 

I owe to you truth as I owe it to myself ; for truth is the law 
of your reason as of mine. Without doubt there ought to be 
measure in the communication of truth, — all are not capable of 
it at the same moment and in the same degree ; it is necessary to 
portion it out to them in order that they may be able to receive 
it; but, in fine, the truth is the proper good of the intelligence; 
and it is for me a strict duty to respect the development of your 
mind, not to arrest, and even to favor its progress towards truth. 

I ought also to respect your liberty. I have not even always 
the right to hinder you from committing a fault. Liberty is so 
sacred that, even when it goes astray, it still deserves, up to a cer- 
tain point, to be managed. We are often wrong in wishing to 
prevent too much the evil that God himself permits. Souls may 
be corrupted by an attempt to purify them. 

I ought to respect you in your affections, which make part of 
yourself; and of all the affections there are none more holy than 
those of the family. There is in us a need of expanding ourselves 
beyond ourselves, yet without dispelling ourselves, of establishing 
ourselves in some souls by a regular and consecrated affection, — 
to this need the family responds. The love of men is something 
of the general good. The family is still almost the individual, 
and not merely the individual, — it only requires us to love as 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 309 

much as ourselves what is almost ourselves. It attaches one to 
the other, by the sweetest and strongest of all ties — father, 
mother, child ; it gives to this sure succor in the love of its pa- 
rents — to these hope, joy, new life, in their child. To violate the 
conjugal or paternal right, is to violate the person in what is 
perhaps its most sacred possession. 

I ought to respect your body, inasmuch as it belongs to you, 
inasmuch as it is the necessary instrument of your person. I 
have neither the right to kill you, nor to wound you, unless I am 
attacked and threatened ; then my violated liberty is armed with 
a new right, the right of defence and even constraint. 

I owe respect to } 7 our goods, for they are the product of 
your labor ; I owe respect to your labor, which is your liberty 
itself in exercise ; and, if your goods come from an inheritance, 
I still owe respect to the free will that has transmitted them to 
you. 1 

Respect for the rights of others is called justice ; every viola- 
tion of a right is an inj ustice. 

Every injustice is an encroachment upon our person, — to re- 
trench the least of our rights, is to diminish our moral person, is, 
at least, so far as that retrenchment goes, to abase us to the con- 
dition of a thing. 

The greatest of all injustices, because it comprises all others, is 
slavery. Slavery is the subjecting of all the faculties of one man 
to the profit of another man. The slave develops his intelligence 
a little only in the interest of another, — it is not for the purpose 
of enlightening him, but to render him more useful, that some 
exercise of mind is allowed him. The slave has not the liberty 
of his movements ; he is attached to the soil, is sold with it, or 
he is chained to the person of a master. The slave should have 
no affection, he has no family, no wife, no children, — he has a 
female and little ones. His activity does not belong to him, for 
the product of his labor is another's. But, that nothing may 

1 On the true foundation of property see the preceding lecture. 



310 LECTUKE FIFTEENTH. 

be wanting to slavery, it is necessary to go farther, — in the slave 
must be destroyed the inborn sentiment of liberty, in him must 
be extinguished all idea of right ; for, as long as this idea subsists, 
slavery is uncertain, and to an odious power may respond the 
terrible right of insurrection, that last resort of the oppressed 
against the abuse of force. 1 

Justice, respect for the person in every thing that constitutes 
the person, is the first duty of man towards his fellow-man. Is 
this duty the only one ? 

When we have respected the person of others, when we have 
neither restrained their liberty, nor smothered their intelligence, 
nor maltreated their body, nor outraged their family, nor injured 
their goods, are we able to say that we have fulfilled the whole 
law in regard to them ? One who is unfortunate is suffering be- 
fore us. Is our conscience satisfied, if we are able to bear witness 
to ourselves that we have not contributed to his sufferings ? No ; 
something tells that it is still good to give him- bread, succor, 
consolation. 

There is here an important distinction to be made. If you 
have remained hard and insensible at the sight of another's 
misery, conscience cries out against you ; and yet this man who 



1 Voluntary servitude is little better than servitude imposed by force. See 
1st Series, vol. iii., lecture 4, p. 240 : " Had another the desire to serve us as 
a slave, without conditions and without limits, to be for us a thing for our 
use, a pure instrument, a staff, a vase, and had we also the desire to make 
use of him in this manner, and to let him serve us in the same way, this reci- 
procity of desires would authorize for neither of us this absolute sacrifice, 
because desire can never be the title of a right, because there is something 
in us that is above all desires, participated or not participated, to wit, duty 
and right, — justice. To justice it belongs to be the rule of our desires, and 
not to our desires to be the rule of justice. Should entire humanity forget 
its dignity, should it consent to its own degradation, should it extend the 
hand to slavery, tyranny would bo none the more legitimate ; eternal justice 
would protest against a contract, which, were it supported by desires, recip- 
rocal desires most authentically expressed and converted into solemn laws, 
is none the less void of all right, because, as Bossuet very truly said, there 
is no right against right, no contracts, no conventions, no human laws 
against the law of laws, against natural law." 



PEIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 311 

is suffering, who, perhaps, is ready to die, has not the least right 
over the least part of your fortune, were it immense ; and, if he 
used violence for the purpose of wresting from you a single 
penny, he would commit a crime. We here meet a new order of 
duties that do not correspond to rights. Man may resort to force 
in order to make his rights respected ; he cannot impose on an- 
other any sacrifice whatever. Justice respects or restores ; charity 
gives, and gives freely. 

Charity takes from us something in order to give it to our 
fellow-men. If it goes so far as to inspire us to renounce our 
dearest interests, it is called devotedness. 

It certainly cannot be said that to be charitable is not obliga- 
tory. But this obligation must not be regarded as precise, as in- 
flexible as the obligation to be just. Charity is a sacrifice; and 
who can find the rule of sacrifice, the formula of self-renunciation ? 
For justice, the formula is clear, — to respect the rights of another. 
But charity knows neither rule nor limit. It transcends all obli- 
gation. Its beauty is precisely in its liberty. 

But it must be acknowledged that charity also has its dangers. 
It tends to substitute its own action for the action of him whom 
it wishes to help ; it somewhat effaces his personality, and makes 
itself in some sort his providence, — a formidable part for a mor- 
tal ! In order to be useful to others, one imposes himself on 
them, and runs the risk of violating their natural rights. Love, 
in giving itself, enslaves. Doubtless it is not interdicted us to 
act upon another. We can always do it through petition and 
exhortation. We can also do it by threatening, when we see one 
of our fellows engaged in a criminal or senseless action. We 
have even the right to employ force when passion carries away 
liberty and makes the person disappear. So we may, we even 
ought to prevent by force the suicide of one of our fellow-men. 
The legitimate power of charity is measured by the more or lees 
liberty and reason possessed by him to whom it is applied. 
What delicacy, then, is necessary in the exercise of this perilous 
virtue ! How can we estimate with sufficient certainty the de- 



312 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

gree of liberty still possessed by one of our fellow-men to know 
how far we may substitute ourselves for him in the guiding of 
his destiny ? And when, in order to assist a feeble soul, we take 
possession of it, who is sufficiently sure of himself not to go far- 
ther, not to pass from the person governed to the love of domina- 
tion itself? Charity is often the commencement and the excuse, 
and always the pretext of usurpation. In order to have the 
right of abandoning one's self to the emotions of charity, it is 
necessary to be fortified against one's self by a long exercise of 
justice. 

To respect the rights of others and do good to men, to be at 
once just and charitable, — such are social ethics in the two ele- 
ments that constitute them. 

We speak of social ethics, and we do not yet know what 
society is. Let us look around us : — everywhere society exists, 
and where it is not, man is not man. Society is a universal fact 
which must have universal foundations. 

Let us avoid at first the question of the origin of society. 1 



1 On the danger of seeking at first the origin of human knowledge, see 1st 
Series, vol. hi., lecture on Hobbes, p. 261 : " Hobbes is not the only one who 
took the question of the origin of societies as the starting-point of political 
science. Nearly all the publicists of the eighteenth century, Montesquieu 
excepted, proceed in the same manner. Eousseau imagines at first a primi- 
tive state in which man being no longer savage without being yet civilized, 
lived happy and free under the dominion of the laws of nature. This golden 
age of humanity disappearing carries with it all the rights of the individual, 
who enters naked and disarmed into what we call the social state. But order 
cannot reign in a state without laws, and since natural laws perished in the 
shipwreck of primitive manners, new ones must be created. Society is 
formed by aid of a contract whoso principle is tho abandonment by each and 
all of their individual force and rights to the profit of the community, of the 
state, tho instrument of all forces, the depository of all rights. The. state, for 
Hobbes, will be a man, a monarch, a king ; for Eousseau, the state is the col- 
lection itself of citizens, who by turns are considered as subjects and govern- 
ors, so that instead of the despotism of one over all, we have the despotism 
of all over each. Law is not tho more or less happy, more or less faithful 
expression of natural justice ; it is the expression of the general will. This 
general will is alone free ; particular wills arc not free. The general will has 
all rights, and particular wills have only the rights that it confers on them, 
or rather lends them. Force, in The Citizen, is the foundation of society, of 



PEIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 313 

The philosophy of the last century delighted in such questions too 
much. How can we demand light from the regions of darkness, 
and the explanation of reality from an hypothesis ? Why go back 
to a pretended primitive state in order to account for a present 
state which may be studied in itself in its unquestionable char- 
acters ? Why seek what may have been in the germ that 
which may be perceived, that which it is the question to under- 
stand, completed and perfect ? Moreover, there is great peril in 
starting with the question of the origin of society. Has such or 
such an origin been found ? Actual society is arranged accord- 
ing to the type of the primitive society that has been dreamed 
of, and political society is delivered up to the mercy of histori- 
cal romances. This one imagines that the primitive state is 
violence, and he sets out from that in order to authorize the 
right of the strongest, and to consecrate despotism. That 
one thinks that he has found in the family the first form of 
society, and he compares government to the father of a family, 
and subjects to children ; society in his eyes is a minor that must 
be held in tutelage in the hands of the paternal power, which in 
'the origin is absolute, and consequently, must remain so. Or 
has one thrown himself to the extreme of the opposite opinion, 
and into the hypothesis of an agreement, of a contract that ex- 
presses the will of all or of the greatest number ? He delivers 



order, of laws, of the rights and duties which laws alone institute. In the 
Contrat Social, the general will plays the same part, fulfils the same function. 
Moreover, the general will scarcely differs in itself from force. In fact, the 
general will is number, that is to say, force still. Thus, on both sides, 
tyranny under different forms. One may here observe the power of method. 
If Hobbes, if Eousseau especially had at first studied the idea of right in it- 
self, with the certain characters without which we are not able to conceive 
it, they would have infallibly recognized that if there are rights derived from 
positive laws, and particularly from conventions and contracts, there are 
rights derived from no contract, since contracts take them for principles and 
rules ; from no convention, since they serve as the foundation to all conven- 
tions in order that these conventions may be reputed just ;— rights that 
society consecrates and develops, but does not make, — rights not subject to 
the caprices of general or particular will, belonging essentially to human 
nature, and like it, inviolable and sacred." 

14: 



314 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

up to the mobile will of the crowd the eternal laws of justice and 
the inalienable rights of the person. Finally, are powerful reli- 
gious institutions found in the cradle of society? It is hence 
concluded, that power belongs of right to priesthoods, which have 
the secret of the designs of God, and represent his sovereign 
authority. Thus a vicious method in philosophy leads to a de- 
plorable political system, — the commencement is made in hy- 
pothesis, and the termination is in anarchy or tyranny. 

True politics do not depend on more or less well directed his- 
torical researches into the profound night of a past forever 
vanished, and of which no vestige subsists : they rest on the 
knowledge of human nature. 

Wherever society is, wherever it was, it has for its foundations : 
— 1st, The need that we have of our fellow-creatures, and the 
social instincts that man bears in himself; 2d, The permanent 
and indestructible idea and sentiment of justice and right. 

Man, feeble and powerless when he is alone, profoundly feels 
the need that he has of the succor of his fellow-creatures in 
order to develop his faculties, to embellish his life, and even to 
preserve it. 1 Without reflection, without convention, he claims 

1 1st Series, vol. iii., p. 265 : " What !" somewhere says Montesquieu, 
" man is everywhere in society, and it is asked whether man was born for 
society ! What is this fact that is reproduced in all the vicissitudes of the 
life of humanity, except a law of humanity? The universal and permanent 
fact of society attests the principle of sociability. This principle shines forth 
in all our inclinations, in our sentiments, in our beliefs. It is true that we 
love society for the advantages that it brings ; but it is none the less true, 
that we also love it for its own sake, that we seek it independently of all cal- 
culation. Solitude saddens us ; it is not less deadly to the life of the moral 
being, than a perfect vacuum is to the life of the physical being. Without 
society what would become of sympathy, which is one of the most powerful 
principles of our soul, which establishes between men a community of sen- 
timents, by which each lives in all and all live in each ? Who would be 
blind enough not to see in that an energetic call of human nature for society ? 
And the attraction of the sexes, their union, the love of parents for children, 
— do they not found a sort of natural society, that is increased and developed 
by the power of the same causes which produced it? Divided by interest, 
united by sentiment, men respect each other in the name of justice. Lot us 
add that they love each other in virtue of natural charity. In the sight of 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 315 

the hand, the experience, the love of those whom he sees made 
like himself. The instinct of society is in the first cry of the 
child that calls for the mother's help without knowing that it has 
a mother, and in the eagerness of the mother to respond to the 
cries of the child. It is in the feelings for others that nature has 
put. in us — pity, sympathy, benevolence. It is in the attraction 
of the sexes, in their union, in the love of parents for their chil- 
dren, and in the ties of every kind that these first ties engender. 
If Providence has attached so much sadness to solitude, so much 
charm to society, it is because society is indispensable for the 
preservation of man and for his happiness, for his intellect and 
moral development. 

But if need and instinct begin society, it is justice that com- 
pletes it. 

In the presence of another man, without any external law, 
without any compact, 1 it is sufficient that I know that he is a 
man, that is to say, that he is intelligent and free, in order to 
know that he has rights, and to know that I ought to respect his 



justice, equal in right, charity inspires us to consider ourselves as brethren, 
and to give each other succor and consolation. "Wonderful thing ! God 
has not left to our wisdom, nor even to experience, the care of forming and 
preserving society, — he has willed that sociability should be a law of our 
nature, and a law so imperative that no tendency to isolation, no egoism, no 
distaste even, can prevail against it. All the power of the spirit of system 
was necessary in order to make Ilobbes say that society is an accident, as an 
incredible degree of melancholy to wring from Eousseau the extravagant ex- 
pression that society is an evil." 

1 1st Series, vol. hi., p. 283 : " We do not hold from a compact our quality 
as man, and the dignity and rights attached to it; or, rather, there is an im- 
mortal compact which is nowhere written, which makes itself felt by every 
uncorrupted conscience, that compact which binds together all beings in- 
telligent, free, and subject to misfortune, by the sacred ties of a common 
respect and a common charity. . . . Laws promulgate duties, but do 
not give birth to them ; they could not violate duties without being unjust, 
and ceasing to merit the beautiful name of laws — that is to say, decisions of 
the public authority worthy of appearing obligatory to the conscience of all. 
Nevertheless, although laws have no other virtue than that of declaring 
what exists before them, we often found on them right and justice, to the 
great detriment of justice itself, and the sentiment of right. Time and 
habit despoil reason of its natural rights in order to transfer it to law. What 



316 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

rights as he ought to respect mine. As he is no freer than I am, 
nor I than he, we recognize towards each other equal rights and 
equal duties. If he abuses his force to violate the equality of our 
rights, I know that I have the right to defend myself and make 
myself respected ; and if a third party is found between us, with- 
out any personal interest in the quarrel, he knows that it is his 
right and his duty to use force in order to protect the feeble, and 
even to make the oppressor expiate his injustice by a chastise- 
ment. Therein is already seen entire society with its essential 
principles, — justice, liberty, equality, government, and punishment. 

Justice is the guaranty of liberty. True liberty does not con- 
sist in doing what we will, but in doing what we have a right to 
do. Liberty of passion and caprice would have for its conse- 
quence the enslavement of the weakest to the strongest, and the 
enslavement of the strongest themselves to their unbridled de- 
sires. Man is truly free in the interior of his consciousness only 
in resisting passion and obeying justice ; therein also is the type 
of true social liberty. Nothing is falser than the opinion that 
society diminishes our mutual liberty ; far from that, it secures it, 
develops it : what it suppresses is not liberty ; it is its opposite, 
passion. Society no more injures liberty than justice, for society 
is nothing else than the very idea of justice realized. 

In securing liberty, justice secures equality also. If men are 
unequal in physical force and intelligence, they are equal in so 
far as they are free beings, and consequently equally worthy of 
respect. All men, when they bear the sacred character of the 
moral person, are to be respected, by the same title, and in the 
same degree. 1 



then happens? We either obey it, even when it is unjust, which is not a 
very great evil, but we do not think of reforming it little by little, having 
no superior principle that enables us to judge it,— or we continually change 
it, in an invincible impotence of founding any thing, by not knowing the 
immutable hasis on which written law must rest. In either case, all pro- 
gress is impossible, because the laws are not related to their true principle, 
which is reason, conscience, sovereign and absolute justice." 
1 Lecture 12. 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 317 

The limit of liberty is in liberty itself; the limit of right is in 
duty. Liberty is to be respected, but provided it injure not the 
liberty of another. I ought to let you do what you please, but 
on the condition that nothing which you do will injure my 
liberty. For then, in virtue of my right of liberty, I should re- 
gard myself as obligated to repress the aberrations of your will, 
in order to protect my own and that of others. Society guaran- 
ties the liberty of each one, and if one citizen attacks that of 
another, he is arrested in the name of liberty. For example, re- 
ligious liberty is sacred ; you may, in the secret of consciousness, 
invent for yourself the most extravagant superstition ; but if you 
wish publicly to inculcate an immoral worship, you threaten the 
liberty and reason of your citizens : such preaching is interdicted. 

From the necessity of repressing springs the necessity of a con- 
stituted repressive force. 

Rigorously, this force is in us ; for if I am unjustly attacked, 
I have the right to defend myself. But, in the first place, I may 
not be the strongest ; in the second place, no one is an impartial 
judge in his own cause, and what I regard or give out as an act 
of legitimate defence may be an act of violence and oppression. 

So the protection of the rights of each one demands an im- 
partial and disinterested force, that may be superior to all partic- 
ular forces. 

This disinterested party, armed with the power necessary to 
secure and defend the liberty of all, is called government. 

The right of government expresses the rights of all and each. 
It is the right of personal defence transferred to a public force, to 
the profit of common liberty. 

Government is not, then, a power distinct from and independent 
of society ; it draws from society its whole force. It is not what 
it has seemed to two opposite schools of publicists, — to those 
who sacrifice society to government, — to those who consider gov- 
ernment as the enemy of society. If government did not repre- 
sent society, it would be only a material, illegitimate, and BOOB 
powerless force; and without government, society would be a war 



318 LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

of all against all. Society makes the moral power of government, 
as government makes the security of society. Pascal is wrong 1 
when he says, that not being able to make what is just powerful, 
men have made what is powerful just. Government, in principle 
at least, is precisely what Pascal desired, — justice armed with 
force. 

It is a sad and false political system that places society and 
government, authority and liberty, in opposition to each other, 
by making them come from two different sources, by presenting 
them as two contrary principles. I often hear the principle of 
authority spoken of as a principle apart, independent, deriving 
from itself its force and legitimacy, and consequently made to 
rule. No error is deeper and more dangerous. Thereby it is 
thought to confirm the principle of authority ; far from that, from 
it is taken away its solidest foundation. Authority — that is to 
say, legitimate and moral authority — is nothing else than justice, 
and justice is nothing else than the respect of liberty ; so that 
there is not therein two different and contrary opinions, but one 
and the same principle, of equal certainty and equal grandeur, 
under all its forms and in all its applications. 

Authority, it is said, comes from God : doubtless; but whence 
comes liberty, whence comes humanity ? To God must be re- 
ferred every thing that is excellent on the earth ; and nothing is 
more excellent than liberty. Reason, which in man commands 
liberty, commands it according to its nature ; and the first law 
that reason imposes on liberty is that of self-respect. 

Authority is so much the stronger as its true title is better un- 
derstood ; and obedience is the easiest when, instead of degrading, 
it honors ; when, instead of resembling servitude, it is at once the 
condition and guaranty of liberty. 

The mission, the end of government, is to make justice, the 
protector of the common liberty, reign. Whence it follows, that 
as long as the liberty of one citizen does not injure the liberty of 

1 See 4th Series, vol. i., p. 40. 



PRIVATE AXD PUBLIC ETHICS. 319 

another, it escapes all repression. So government cannot be 
severe against falsehood, intemperance, imprudence, levity, ava- 
rice, egoism, except when these vices become prejudicial to others. 
Moreover, it is not necessary to confine government within too 
narrow limits. Government, which represents society, is also a 
moral person ; it has a heart like the individual ; it has generos- 
ity, goodness, charity. There are legitimate, and even universally 
admired facts, that are not explained, if the function of govern- 
ment is reduced to the protection of rights alone. 1 Government 
owes to the citizens, in a certain measure, to guard their well- 
being, to develop their intelligence, to fortify their morality, for 
the interest of society, and even for the interest of humanity. 
Hence sometimes for government the formidable right of using 
force in order to do good to men. But we are here touching 
upon that delicate point where charity inclines to despotism. Too 
much intelligence and wisdom, therefore, cannot be demanded 
in the employment of a power perhaps necessary, but dangerous. 

Xow, on what condition is government exercised ? Is an act 
of its own will sufficient for it in order to employ to its own 
liking under all circumstances, as it shall understand them, the 
power that has been confided to it ? Government must have 
been thus exercised in early society, and in the infancy of the art 
of governing. But the power, exercised by men, may go astray 
in different ways, either through weakness or through excess of 
force. It must, then, have a rule superior to itself, a public and 
known rule, that may be a lesson for the citizens, and for the 
government a rein and support : that rule is called law. 

Universal and absolute law is natural justice, which cannot be 
written, but speaks to the reason and heart of all. Written laws 
are the formulas wherein it is sought to express, with the least 



1 See our pamphlet entitled Justice and Charity, composed in 1848, in the 
midst of the excesses of socialism, in order to remind of the dignity of lib- 
erty, the character, bearing, and the impassable limits of true charity, pri- 
vate and civil. 



320 LECTTJEE FIFTEENTH. 

possible imperfection, what natural justice requires in such or 
such determined circumstances. 

If laws propose to express in each thing natural justice, which 
is universal and absolute justice, one of the necessary conditions 
of a good law is the universality of its character. It is necessary 
to examine in an abstract and general manner what is required 
by justice in such or such a case, to the end that this case being 
presented may be judged according to the rule laid down, with- 
out regard to circumstances, place, time, or person. 

The collection of those rules or laws that govern the social re- 
lations of individuals is called positive right. Positive right rests 
wholly on natural right, which at once serves as its foundation, 
measure, and limit. The supreme law of every positive law is 
that it be not opposed to natural law : no law can impose on us 
a false duty, nor deprive us of a true right. 

The sanction of law is punishment. We have already seen 
that the right to punish springs from the idea of demerit. 1 In 



1 See on the theory of penalty, the Gorgias, vol. iii. of the translation of 
Plato, and our argument, p. 367 : " The first law of order is to be faithful to 
virtue, and to that part of virtue which is related to society, to wit, justice ; 
but if one is wanting in that, the second law of order is to expiate one's 
fault, and it is expiated by punishment. Publicists are still seeking the 
foundation of penalty. Some, who think themselves great politicians, find 
it in the utility of the punishment for those who witness it, and are turned 
aside from crime by fear of its menace, by its preventive virtue. And that 
it is true, is one of the effects of penalty, but it is not its foundation; for 
punishment falling upon the innocent, would produce as much, and still 
more terror, and would be quite as preventive. Others, in their preten- 
sions to humanity, do not wish to see the legitimacy of punishment except 
in its utility for him who undergoes it, in its corrective virtue, — and that, 
too, is one of the possible effects of punishment, but not its foundation; for 
that punishment may be corrective, it must be accepted as just. It is, then, 
always necessary to recur to justice. Justice is the true foundation of pun- 
ishment, — personal and social utility are only consequences. It is an incon- 
testable fact, that after every unjust act, man thinks, and cannot but think 
that he has incurred demerit, that is to say, has merited a punishment. In 
intelligence, to the idea of injustice corresponds that of penalty; and when 
injustice has taken place in the social sphere, merited punishment ought to 
be inflicted by society. Society can inflict it only because it ought. Right 
here has no other source than duty, the strictest, most evident, and most 



PER' ATE AXD PUBLIC ETHICS. 321 

the universal order, to God alone it belongs to apply a punish- 
ment to all faults, whatever they may be. In the social order, 
government is invested with the right to punish only for the pur- 
pose of protecting liberty by imposing a just reparation on those 
who violate it. Every fault that is not contrary to justice, and 
does not strike at liberty, escapes, then, social retribution. Neither 
is the right to punish the right of avenging one's self. To render 
evil for evil, to demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is 
the barbarous form of a justice without light ; for the evil that I 
do you will not take away the evil that you have done me. It 
is not the pain felt by the victim that demands a corresponding 
pain ; it is violated justice that imposes on the culpable man the 
expiation of suffering. Such is the morality of penalty. The 
principle of penalty is not the reparation of damage caused. If 
I have caused you damage without intending it, I pay you an 
indemnity ; that is not a penalty, for I am not culpable ; whilst 
if I have committed a crime, in spite of the material indemnity 
for the evil that I have done, I owe a reparation to justice by a 
proper suffering, and in that truly consists the penalty. 

What is the exact proportion of chastisements and crimes ? 
This question cannot receive an absolute solution. AYhat is here 
immutable, is that the act opposed to justice merits a punishment, 
and that the more unjust the act is, the severer ought to be the 
punishment. But by the side of the right to punish is the duty 
of correcting. To the culprit must be left the possibility of re- 



sacred duty, without which this pretended right would be only that of force, 
that is to say, an atrocious injustice, should it even result in the moral profit 
of him who undergoes it, and in a salutary spectacle for the people, — what 
it would not then be; for then the punishment would find no sympathy, no 
echo, either in the public conscience or in that of the condemned. The pun- 
ishment is not just, because it is preventively or correctively useful ; but 
it is in both ways useful, because it is just. This theory of penalty, in de- 
monstrating the falsity, the incomplete and exclusive character of two theo- 
ries that divide publicists, completes and explains them, and gives them 
both a legitimate centre and base. It is doubtless only indicated in Plato, 
but is met in several passages, briefly but positively expressed, and on it 
rests the sublime theorv of expiation. 

u* 



322 LECTUKE FIFTEENTH. 

pairing his crime. The culpable man is still a man ; he is not a 
thing of which we ought to rid ourselves as soon as it becomes 
injurious, a stone that falls on our heads, that we throw into a 
gulf that it may wound no more. Man is a rational being, capa- 
ble of comprehending good and evil, of repenting, and of being 
one day reconciled with order. These truths have given birth to 
works that honor the close of the eighteenth century and the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth. The conception of houses of correction 
reminds one of those early times of Christianity when punishment 
consisted in an expiation that permitted the culprit to return 
through repentance to the ranks of the just. Here intervenes, as 
we have just indicated, the principle of charity, which is very 
different from the principle of justice. To punish is just, to 
ameliorate is charitable. In what measure ought those two 
principles to be united ? Nothing is more delicate, more difficult 
to determine. It is certain that justice ought to govern. In un- 
dertaking the amendment of the culprit, government usurps, 
with a very generous usurpation, the rights of religion ; but it 
ought not to go so far as to forget its proper function and its rig- 
orous duty. 

Let us pause on the threshold of politics, properly so called. 
Nothing in them but these principles is fixed and invariable ; all 
else is relative. The constitutions of states have something abso- 
lute by their relation to the inviolable rights which they ought to 
guarantee ; but they also have a relative side by the variable 
forms with which they are clothed, according to times, places, 
manners, history. The supreme rule of which philosophy re- 
minds politics, is that politics ought, in consulting all circum- 
stances, to seek always those social forms and institutions that 
best realize those eternal principles. Yes, they are eternal ; be- 
cause they are drawn from no arbitrary hypothesis, because they 
rest on the immutable nature of man, on the all-powerful instincts 
of the heart, on the indestructible notion of justice, and the sub- 
lime idea of charity, on the consciousness of person, liberty, and 
equality, on duty and right, on merit and demerit. Such are the 



PRIVATE AND PUBLIC ETHICS. 323 

foundations of all true society, worthy of the beautiful name of 
human society, that is to say, formed of free and rational beings ; 
and such are the maxims that ought to direct every govern- 
ment worthy of its mission, which knows that it is not deal- 
ing with beasts but with men, which respects them and loves 
them. 

Thank God, French society has always marched by the light 
of this immortal idea, and the dynasty that has been at its head 
for some centuries has always guided it in these generous ways. 
It was Louis le Gros, who, in the Middle Age, emancipated the 
communes ; it was Philippe le Bel who instituted parliaments — 
an independent and gratuitous justice ; it was Henri IV. who 
began religious liberty ; it was Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. who, 
while they undertook to give to France her natural frontiers, and 
almost succeeded in it, labored to unite more and more all parts 
of the nation, to put a regular administration in the place of 
feudal anarchy, and to reduce the great vassals to a simple aris- 
tocracy, from day to day deprived of every privilege but that of 
serving the common country in the first rank. It was a king of 
France who, comprehending the new wants, and associating him- 
self with the progress of the times, attempted to substitute for 
that very real, but confused and formless representative govern- 
ment, that was called the assemblies of the nobility, the clergy, 
and the tiers gtat, the true representative government that is 
proper for great civilized nations, — a glorious and unfortunate 
attempt that, if royalty had then been served by a Richelieu, a 
Mazarin, or a Colbert, might have terminated in a necessary re- 
form, that, through the fault of every one, ended in a revolution 
full of excess, violence, and crime, redeemed and covered by an 
incomparable courage, a sincere patriotism, and the most brilliant 
triumphs. Finally, it was the brother of Louis XVI. who, en- 
lightened and not discouraged by the misfortunes of his family, 
spontaneously gave to France that liberal and wise constitution 
of which our fathers had dreamed, about which Montesquieu had 
written, which, loyally adhered to, and necessarily developed. i> 



324: LECTURE FIFTEENTH. 

admirably fitted for the present time, and sufficient for a long 
future. We are fortunate in finding in the Charter the principles 
that we have just explained, that contain our views and our 
hopes for France and humanity. 1 



1 As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general prin- 
ciples. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st Series, 
vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil and politi- 
cal guaranties which they demand ; we even touched the question of the 
different forms of government, and established the truth and beauty of the 
constitutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 13, we explained 
and defended the Charter in its fundamental parts. Under the government 
of July, the part of defender of both liberty and royalty was easy. We con- 
tinued it in 1848 ; and when, at the unexpected inundation of democracy, 
soon followed by a passionate reaction in favor of an absolute authority, 
many minds, and the best, asked themselves whether the young American 
republic was not called to serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesi- 
tate to maintain the principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty ; we 
believe that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, 
And in particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary, can be ob- 
tained only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy, — 6th Series, Political 
Discourses, with an introduction on the principles of the French Revolution 
and representative government. 



LECTURE XVI. 

GOD THE PKINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 

Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation of moral 
truth, of the good, and of the moral person. — Liberty of God. — The divine 
justice and charity. — God the sanction of the moral law. Immortality of 
the soul ; argument from merit and demerit ; argument from the simplicity 
of the soul; argument from final causes. — Religious sentiment. — Adora- 
tion. — Worship. — Moral beauty of Christianity. 

The moral order has been confirmed, — we are in possession of 
moral truth, of the idea of the good, and the obligation that is 
attached to it. Now, the same principle that has not permitted 
us to stop at absolute truth, 1 and has forced us to seek its supreme 
reason in a real and substantial being, forces us here again 
to refer the idea of the good to the being who is its first and last 
foundation. 

Moral truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, 
cannot remain in a state of abstraction. In us it is only conceived. 
There must somewhere be a being who not only conceives it, but 
constituted it. 

As all beautiful things and all true things are related — these 
to a unity that is absolute truth, and those to another unity that 
is absolute beauty, so all moral principles participate in the same 
principle, which is the good. We thus elevate ourselves to the 
conception of the good in itself, of absolute good, superior to all 
particular duties, and determined in these duties. Now, can the 
absolute good be any thing else than an attribute of him who, 
properly speaking, is alone absolute being ? 

1 Lectures 4 and 7. 



326 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

Would it be possible that there might be several absolute 
beings, and that the being in whom are realized absolute truth 
and absolute beauty might not also be the one who is the princi- 
ple of absolute good ? The very idea of the absolute implies 
absolute unity. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are not 
three distinct essences ; they are one and the same essence con- 
sidered in its fundamental attributes. Our mind distinguishes 
them, because it can comprehend them only by division ; but, in 
the being in whom they reside, they are indivisibly united ; and 
this being at once triple and one, who sums up in himself perfect 
beauty, perfect truth, and the supreme good, is nothing else than 
God. 

So God is necessarily the principle of moral truth and the 
good. He is also the type of the moral person that we carry 
in us. 

Man is a moral person, that is to say, he is endowed with rea- 
son and liberty. He is capable of virtue, and virtue has in him 
two principal forms, respect of others, and love of others, justice 
and charity. 

Can there be among the attributes possessed by the creature 
something essential not possessed by the Creator ? Whence does 
the effect draw its reality and its being, except from its cause ? 
What it possesses, it borrows and receives. The cause at least 
contains all that is essential in the effect. What particularly 
belongs to the effect, is inferiority, is a lack, is imperfection : from 
the fact alone that it is dependent and derived, it bears in itself 
the signs and the conditions of dependence. If, then, we cannot 
legitimately conclude from the imperfection of the effect in that 
of the cause, we can and must conclude from the excellence of 
the effect in the perfection of the cause, otherwise there would 
be something prominent in the effect which would be without 
cause. 

Such is the principle of our theodicea. It is neither new nor 
subtle ; but it has not yet been thoroughly disengaged and eluci- 
dated, and it is, to our eyes, firm against every test. It is by the 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 327 

aid of this principle that we can, up to a certain point, penetrate 
into the true nature of God. 

God is not a being of logic, whose nature can be explained by- 
way of deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, 
setting out from a first attribute, we have deduced the attributes 
of God from each other, after the manner of geometricians and 
the schoolmen, what do we possess, 1 1 pray you, but abstractions ? 
It is necessary to leave these vain dialectics in order to arrive at 
a real and living God. 

The first notion that we have of God, to wit, the notion of an 
infinite being, is itself given to us independently of all experience. 
It is the consciousness of ourselves, as being at once, and as being 
limited, that elevates us directly to the conception of a being who 
is the principle of our being, and is himself without bounds. 
This solid and simple argument, which is at bottom that of Des- 
cartes, 2 opens to us a way that must be followed, in which Des- 
cartes too quickly stopped. If the being that we possess forces 
us to recur to a cause which possesses being in an infinite degree, 
all that we have of being, that is to say, of substantial attributes, 
equally requires an infinite cause. Then, God will no longer be 
merely the infinite, abstract, or at least indeterminate being in 
which reason and the heart know not where to betake themselves, 3 

1 Such is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without excepting the 
"best — that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the most popular of all, the Pro- 
fession de Foidu Vlcaire Savoyard. See our small work entitled Philosoplde 
Populaire, 3d edition, p. 82. 

2 On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st, lecture 4; see also 1st 
Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v., lecture 6. 

3 Fragments de Philosophie Cartesie?ine, p. 24: "The infinite being, inas- 
much as infinite, is not a mover, a cause ; neither is he, inasmuch as infinite, 
an intelligence ; neither is he a will ; neither is he a principle of justice, nor 
much less a principle of love. "We have no right to impute to him all these 
attributes in virtue of the single argument that every contingent bcin^ sup- 
poses a being that is not so, that every finite supposes an infinite. The God 
given by this argument is the God of Spinoza, is rigorously so; but lie is 
almost as though he were not, at least for us who with difficulty perceive 
him in the inaccesible heights of an eternity and existence that arc absolute, 
void of thought, of liberty, of love, similar to nonentity itself, and a thou- 
sand times inferior, in his infinity and eternity, to an hour of our finite and 



LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

he will be a real and determined being, a moral person like ours ; 
and psychology conducts us without hypothesis to a theodicea at 
once sublime and related to us. 1 

Before all, if man is free, can it be that God is not free ? No 
one contends that he who is cause of all causes, who has no 
cause but himself, can be dependent on any thing whatever. 
But in freeing God from all external constraint, Spinoza subjects 
him to an internal and mathematical necessity, wherein he finds 
the perfection of being. Yes, of being which is not a person ; 
but the essential character of personal being is precisely liberty. 
If, then, God were not free, God would be beneath man. Would 
it not be strange that the creature should have the marvellous 
power of disposing of himself, and of freely willing, and that 
the being who has made him should be subjected to a neces- 
sary development, whose cause is only in himself, without doubt, 
but, in fine, is a sort of abstract power, mechanical or metaphys- 
ical, but very inferior to the personal and voluntary cause that 
we are, and of which we have the clearest consciousness ? God 
is therefore free, since we are free. But he is not free as we are 
free ; for God is at once all that we are, and nothing that we 
are. He possesses the same attributes that we possess, but ele- 
vated to infinity. He possesses an infinite liberty, joined to an 
infinite intelligence ; and, as his intelligence is infallible, excepted 
from the uncertainties of deliberation, and perceiving at a glance 
where the good is, so his liberty spontaneously, and without 
effort, fulfils it. 2 



perishable existence, if during this fleeting hour we know what we are, if we 
think, if we love something else than ourselves, if we feel capable of freely 
sacrificing to an idea the few minutes that have been accorded to us." 

1 This theodicea is here in resume, and in the 4th and 5th lectures of part 
first, as well as in the lecture that follows. The most important of our dif- 
ferent writings, on this point, will be found collected and elucidated by each 
other, in the Appendix to the 5th lecture of the first volume of the 1st Series. 
— See our translation of this entire Series of M. Cousin's works, under the 
title of the History of Modern Philosophy, 

a :5d Scries, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3d edition : " Without vain 
subtilty, there is a real distinction between free will and spontaneous liber- 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 329 

In the same manner as we transfer to God the liberty that is 
the foundation of our being, we also transfer to him justice and 
charity. In man, justice and charity are virtues ; in God, they 
are attributes. What is in us the laborious conquest of liberty, 

ty. Arbitrary freedom is volition with, the appearance of deliberation be- 
tween different objects, and under this supreme condition, that when, as a 
consequence of deliberation, we resolve to do this or that, we have the im- 
mediate consciousness of having been able, and of being able still, to will 
the contrary. It is in volition, and in the retinue of phenomena which sur- 
round it, that liberty more energetically appears, but it is not thereby ex- 
hausted. It is at rare and sublime moments in which liberty is as much 
greater as it appears less to the eyes of a superficial observation. I have 
often cited the example of d' Assas. D' Assas did not deliberate ; and for all 
that, was d 1 Assas less free, did he not act with entire liberty ? Has the saint 
who, after a long and painful exercise of virtue, has come to practise, as it 
were by nature, the acts of self-renunciation which are repugnant to human 
weakness ; has the saint, in order to have gone out from the contradictions 
and the anguish of this form of liberty which we called volition, fallen be- 
low it instead of being elevated above it; and is he nothiug more than a 
blind and passive instrument of grace, as Luther and Calvin have inappro- 
priately wished to call it, by an excessive interpretation of the Augustinian 
doctrine ? No, freedom still remains ; and far from being annihilated, its 
liberty, in being purified, is elevated and ennobled; from the human form 
of volition it has passed to the almost divine form of spontaneity. Sponta- 
neity is essentially free, although it may be accompanied with no deliberation, 
and although often, in the rapid motion of its inspired action, it escapes its 
own observation, and leaves scarcely a trace in the depths of consciousness. 
Let us transfer this exact psychology to theodicea, and we may recognize 
without hypothesis, that spontaneity is also especially the form of God's lib- 
erty. Yes, certainly, God is free ; for, among other proofs, it would be ab- 
surd that there should be less freedom in the first cause than in one of its 
effects, humanity; God is free, but not with that liberty which is related to 
our double nature, and made to contend against passion and error, and pain- 
fully to engender virtue and our imperfect knowledge ; he is free, with a 
liberty that is related to his own divine nature, that is a liberty unlimited, in- 
finite, recognizing no obstacle. Between justice and injustice, between good 
and evil, between reason and its contrary, God cannot deliberate, and, con- 
sequently, cannot will after our manner. Can one conceive, in fact, that he 
could take what we call the bad part? This very supposition is impious. It 
is necessary to admit that when he has taken the contrary part, he has acted 
freely without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the consciousness of 
having been able to choose the other part. His nature, all-powerful, all just, 
all-wise, is developed with that spontaneity which contains entire liberty,, 
and excludes at once the efforts and the miseries of volition, and the me- 
chanical operation of necessity. Such is the principle and the true charac- 
ter of the divine action." 



330 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

is in him his very nature. If respect of rights is in us the very- 
essence of justice and the sign of the dignity of our being, it is 
impossible that the perfect being should not know and respect 
the rights of the lowest beings, since it is he, moreover, who has 
imparted to them those rights. In God resides a sovereign jus- 
tice, which renders to each one his due, not according to decep- 
tive appearances, but according to the truth of things. Finally, 
if man, that limited being, has the power of going out of himself, 
of forgetting his person, of loving another than himself, of de- 
voting himself to another's happiness, or, what is better, to the 
perfecting of another, should not the perfect being have, in an 
infinite degree, this disinterested tenderness, this charity, the su- 
preme virtue of the human person ? Yes, there is in God an 
infinite tenderness for his creatures : he at first manifested it in 
giving us the being that he might have withheld, and at all times 
it appears in the innumerable signs of his divine providence. 
Plato knew this love of God well, and expressed it in those great 
words, " Let us say that the cause which led the supreme or- 
dainer to produce and compose this universe is, that he was good ; 
and he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from envy, 
he willed that all things should be, as much as possible, like 
himself." 1 Christianity went farther: according to the divine 
doctrine, God so loved men that he gave them his only Son. 
God is inexhaustible in his charity, as he is inexhaustible in his 
essence. It is impossible to give more to the creature ; he gives 
him every thing that he can receive without ceasing to be a crea- 
ture ; he gives him every thing, even himself, so far as the crea- 
ture is in him and he in the creature. At the same time nothing 
can be lost ; for being absolute being, he eternally expands and 
gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in power, infi- 
nite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaustless abundance upon 
the world, to teach us that the more we give the more we pos- 
sess. It is egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart, 

1 Timceus, p. 119, vol. xii. of our translation. 



GOD THE PKINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 331 

even by the side of the sincerest charity, that inculcates in us 
the error that we lose by self-devotion : it is egoism that makes 
us call devotion a sacrifice. 

If God is wholly just and wholly good, he can will nothing 
but what is good and just ; and, as he is all-powerful, every thing 
that he wills he can do, and consequently does do. The world 
is the work of God ; it is therefore perfectly made, perfectly 
adapted to its end. 

And nevertheless, there is in the world a disorder that seems 
to accuse the justice and goodness of God. 

A principle that is attached to the very idea of the good, says 
to us that every moral agent deserves a reward when he does 
good, and a punishment when he does evil. This principle is 
universal and necessary : it is absolute. If this principle has 
not its application in this world, it must either be a lie, or this 
world is ordered ill. 

Now, it is a fact that the good is not always followed by hap- 
piness, nor evil always by unhappiness. 

Let us, in the first place, remark that if the fact exists, it is 
rare enough, and seems to present the character of an exception. 

Virtue is a struggle against passion ; this struggle, full of 
dignity, is also full of pain ; but, on one side, crime is con- 
demned to much harder pains ; on the other, those of virtue are 
of short duration ; they are a necessary and almost always be- 
neficent trial. 

Virtue has its pains, but the greatest happiness is still with it, 
as the greatest unhappiness is with crime ; and such is the case 
in small and great, in the secret of the soul, and on the theatre 
of life, in the obscurest conditions and in the most conspicuous 
situations. 

Good and bad health are, after all, the greatest part of happi- 
ness or unhappiness. In this regard, compare temperance and 
its opposite, order and disorder, virtue and vice ; I mean a tem- 
perance truly temperate, and not an atrabilarious asceticism, a 
rational virtue, and not a fierce virtue. 



332 LECTUEE SIXTEENTH. 

The great physician Huf eland 1 remarks that the benevolent 
sentiments are favorable to health, and that the malevolent sen- 
timents are opposed to it. Violent and sinful passions irritate, 
inflame, and carry trouble into the organization as well as the 
soul ; the benevolent affections preserve the measured and har- 
monious play of all the functions. 

Hufeland again remarks that the greatest longevities pertain to 
wise and well-regulated lives. 

Thus, for health, strength, and life, virtue is better than vice : 
it is already much, it seems to me. 

I surely mean to speak of conscience only after health ; but, 
in fine, with the body, our most constant host is conscience. 
Peace or trouble of conscience decides internal happiness or un- 
happiness. At this point of view, compare again order and dis- 
order, virtue and vice. 

And without us, in society, to whom come esteem and con- 
tempt, consideration and infamy ? Certainly opinion has its mis- 
takes, but they are not long. In general, if charlatans, in- 
triguers, impostors of every kind, for some time surreptitiously 
get suffrages, it must be that a sustained honesty is the surest 
and the almost infallible means of reaching a good renown. 

I regret that upon this point time does not allow of any devel- 
opment. It would have afforded me delight, after having dis- 
tinguished virtue from happiness, to show them to you almost 
always united by the admirable law of merit and demerit. I 
should have been pleased to show you this beneficent law al- 
ready governing human destiny, and called to preside over it 
more exactly from day to day by the ever-increasing progress of 
lights in governments and peoples, by the perfecting of civil and 
judicial institutions. It would have been my wish to make pass 
into your minds and hearts the consoling conviction that, after 
all, justice is already in this world, and that the surest road to 
happiness is still that of virtue. 

1 De VArt de prolong er sa Vie, etc-. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 333 

This was the opinion of Socrates and Plato ; and it is also that 
of Franklin, and I gather it from my personal experience and an 
attentive examination of human life. But I admit that there are 
exceptions ; and were there but one exception, it would be neces- 
sary to explain it. 

Suppose a man, young, beautiful, rich, amiable, and loved, 
who, placed between the scaffold and the betrayal of a sacred 
cause, voluntarily mounts the scaffold at twenty years of age. 
What do you make of this noble victim ? The law of merit and 
demerit seems here suspended. Do you dare blame virtue, or 
how in this world do you accord to it the recompense that it has 
not sought, but is its due ? 

By careful search you will find more than one case analogous 
to that. 

The laws of this world are general ; they turn aside to suit no 
one : they pursue their course without regard to the merit or de- 
merit of any. If a man is born with a bad temperament, it is in 
virtue of certain obscure but undeviating physical laws, to which 
he is subject, like the animal and the plant, and he suffers during 
his whole life, although personally innocent. He is brought up 
in the midst of flames, epidemics, calamities that strike at hazard 
the good as well as the bad. 

Human justice condemns many that are innocent, it is true, 
but it absolves, in fault of proof, more than one who is culpable. 
Besides, it knows only certain derelictions. What faults, what 
basenesses occur in the dark, which do not receive merited chas- 
tisement ! In like manner, what obscure devotions of which 
God is the sole witness and judge ! Without doubt nothing 
escapes the eye of conscience, and the culpable soul cannot 
escape remorse. But remorse is not always in exact relation 
with the fault committed ; its vivacity may depend on a nature 
more or less delicate, on education and habit. In a word, if it is 
in general very true that the law of merit and demerit is ful- 
filled in this world, it is not fulfilled with mathematical rigor. 

What must we conclude from this ? That the world is ill- 



334 LECTUEE SIXTEENTH. 

made ? No. That cannot be, and is not. That cannot be, for 
incontestably the world has a just and good author ; that is not, 
for, in fact, we see order reigning in the world ; and it would 
be absurd to misconceive the manifest order that almost every- 
where shines forth on account of a few phenomena that we can- 
not refer to order. The universe endures, therefore it is well 
made. The pessimism of Voltaire is still more opposed to the 
aggregate of facts than an absolute optimism. Between these 
two systematic extremes which facts deny, the human race places 
the hope of another life. It has found it very irrational to reject 
a necessary law on account of some infractions ; it has, therefore, 
maintained the law ; and from infractions it has only concluded 
that they ought to be referred to the law, that there will be a 
reparation. Either this conclusion must be admitted, or the 
two great principles previously admitted, that God is just, and 
that the law of merit and demerit is an absolute law, must be 
rejected. 

Now, to reject these two principles is to totally overthrow all 
human belief. 

To maintain them, is implicitly to admit that actual life must 
be elsewhere terminated or continued. 

But is this continuation of the person possible ? After the dis- 
solution of the body, can any thing of us remain ? 

In truth, the moral person, which acts well or ill, which awaits 
the reward or punishment of its good or bad actions, is united to 
a body, — it lives with the body, makes use of it, and, in a certain 
measure, depends on it, but is not it. 1 The body is composed of 



1 On the spirituality of the soul, see all our writings. We will limit our- 
selves to two citations. 2d Series, vol. iii., lecture 25, p. 359 : "It is impos- 
sible to know any phenomenon of consciousness, the phenomena of sensa- 
tion, or volition, or of intelligence, without instantly referring them to a sub- 
ject one and identical, which is the me; so we cannot know the external 
phenomena of resistance, of solidity, of impenetrability, of figure, of color, 
of smell, of taste, etc., without judging that these are not phenomena in ap- 
pearance, but phenomena which belong to something real, which is solid, 
impenetrable, figured, colored, odorous, savory, etc. On the other hand, if 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 335 

parts, may decrease or increase ; is divisible, essentially divisible, 
and even infinitely divisible. But that something that has con- 
sciousness of itself, that says, /, me, that feels itself to be free and 
responsible, does it not also feel that there is in it no division, 



you did not know any of the phenomena of consciousness, you would never 
have the least idea of the subject of these phenomena ; if you did not know 
any of the external phenomena of resistance, of solidity, of impenetrability, 
of figure, of color, etc., you would not have any idea of the subject of these 
phenomena : therefore the characters, whether of the phenomena of con- 
sciousness, or of exterior phenomena, are for you the only signs of the nature 
of the subjects of these phenomena. In examining the phenomena which 
fall under the senses, we find between them grave differences upon which it 
is useless here to insist, and which establish the distinction of primary 
qualities and of secondary qualities. In the first rank among the primary 
qualities is solidity, which is given to you in the sensation of resistance, and 
inevitably accompanied by form, etc. On the contrary, when you examine 
the phenomena of consciousness, you do not therein find this character of 
resistance, of solidity, of form, etc. ; you do not find that the phenomena of 
your consciousness have a figure, solidity, impenetrability, resistance ; with- 
out speaking of secondary qualities which are equally foreign to them, color, 
savor, sound, smell, etc. Now, as the subject is for us only the collection of 
the phenomena which reveal it to us, together with its own existence in so 
far as the subject of the inherence of these phenomena, it follows that, under 
phenomena marked with dissimilar characters and entirely foreign to each 
other, the human mind conceives dissimilar and foreign subjects. Thus as 
solidity and figure have nothing in common with sensation, will, and 
thought, as every solid is extended for us, and as Ave place it necessarily in 
space, while our thoughts, our volitions, our sensations, are for us unex- 
tended, and while we cannot conceive them and place them in space, but 
only in time, the human mind concludes with perfect strictness that the 
subject of the exterior phenomena has the character of the latter, and that 
the subject of the phenomena of consciousness has the character of the for- 
mer ; that the one is solid and extended, and that the other is neither solid 
nor extended. Finally, as that which is solid and extended is divisible, a 1 
as that which is neither solid nor extended is indivisible, hence divisibility 
is attributed to the solid and extended subject, and indivisibility attributed 
to the subject which is neither extended nor solid. Who of us, iu fact, does 
not believe himself an indivisible being, one and identical, the same yester- 
day, to-day, and to-morrow ? Well, the word body, the word matter, signi- 
fies nothing else than the subject of external phenomena, the most eminent 
of which are form, impenetrability, solidity, extension, divisibility. The 
word mind, the word soul, signifies nothing else than the Bubjeol of the phe- 
nomena of consciousness, thought, will, sensation, phenomena simple, on- 
extended, not solid, etc. Behold the whole idea of spirit, and the whole 
idea of matter! See, therefore, all that must bo done in order to bring back 



336 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

even no possible division, that it is a being one and simple? Ts 
the me more or less me ? Is there a half of me, a quarter of me ? 
I cannot divide my person. It remains identical to itself under 
the diversity of the phenomena that manifest it. This identity, 
this indivisibility of the person, is its spirituality. Spirituality is, 



matter to spirit, and spirit to matter : it is necessary to pretend that sensa- 
tion, volition, thought, are reducible in the last analysis to solidity, exten- 
sion, figure, divisibility, etc., or that solidity, extension, figure, etc., are re- 
ducible to thought, volition, sensation." 1st Series, vol. hi., lecture 1, 
Locke. "Locke pretends that we cannot be certain oy the contemplation of 
our own ideas, that matter cannot think ; on the contrary, it is in the con- 
templation itself of our ideas that we clearly perceive that matter and thought 
are incompatible. What is thinking ? Is it not uniting a certain number of 
ideas under a certain unity ? The simplest judgment supposes several terms 
united in a subject, one and identical, which is me. This identical me is im- 
plied in every real act of knowledge. It has been demonstrated to satiety 
that comparison exacts an indivisible centre that comprises the different 
terms of the comparison. Do you take memory ? There is no memory pos- 
sible without the continuation of the same subject that refers to self the 
different modifications by which it has been successively affected. Finally, 
consciousness, that indispensable condition of intelligence,— is it not the 
sentiment of a single being ? This is the reason why each man cannot think 
without saying me, without affirming that he is himself the identical and one 
subject of his thoughts. I am me and always me, as you are always yourself 
in the most different acts of your life. You are not more yourself to-day 
than you were yesterday, and you are not less yourself to-day than you were 
yesterday. This identity and this indivisible unity of the me inseparable 
from the least thought, is what is called its spirituality, in opposition to the 
evident and necessary characters of matter. By what, in fact, do you know 
matter? It is especially by form, by extension, by something solid that 
stops you, that resists you in different points of space. But is not a solid 
essentially divisible ? Take the most subtile fluids, — can you help conceiv- 
ing them as more or less susceptible of division? All thought has its 
different elements like matter, but in addition it has its unity in the think- 
ing subject, and the subject being taken away, which is one, the total phe- 
nomenon no longer exists. Far from that, the unknown subject to which 
we attach material phenomena is divisible, and divisible ad infinitum; it 
cannot cease to be divisible without ceasing to exist. Such are the ideas 
that we have, on the one side, of mind, on the other, of matter. Thought 
es a subject essentially one; matter is infinitely divisible. What is 
the need of going farther? If any conclusion is legitimate, it is that which 
distinguishes thought from matter. God can indeed make them exist to- 
gether, and their co-existence is a certain fact, but he cannot confound them. 
God can unite thought and matter, he cannot make matter thought, nor 
what is extended simple." 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 337 

therefore, the very essence of the person. Belief in the spirit- 
uality of the soul is involved in the belief of this identity of the 
me, which no rational being has ever called in question. Accord- 
ingly, there is not the least hypothesis for affirming that the soul 
does not essentially differ from the body. Add that when we 
say the soul, we mean to say, and do say the person, which is 
not separated from the consciousness of the attributes that con- 
stitute it, thought and will. The being without consciousness is 
not a person. It is the person that is identical, one, simple. Its 
attributes, in developing it, do not divide it. Indivisible, it is in- 
dissoluble, and may be immortal. If, then, divine justice, in 
order to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal soul, 
it does not demand an impossible thing. The spirituality of the 
soul is the necessary foundation of immortality. The law of 
merit and demerit is the direct demonstration of this. The first 
proof is called the metaphysical proof, the second, the moral 
proof, which is the most celebrated, most popular, at once the 
most convincing and the most persuasive. 

What powerful motives are added to these two proofs to for- 
tify them in the heart ! The following, for example, is a pre- 
sumption of great value for any one that believes in the virtue of 
sentiment and instinct. 

Every thing has its end. This principle is as absolute as that 
which refers every event to a cause. 1 Man has, therefore, an end. 
This end is revealed in all his thoughts, in all his ways, in all his 
sentiments, in all his life. Whatever he does, whatever he feels, 
whatever he thinks, he thinks upon the infinite, loves the infinite, 
tends to the infinite. 2 This need of the infinite is the main- 
spring of scientific curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love 
also stops and rests only there. On the route it may experience 
lively joys ; but a secret bitterness that is mingled with them 
soon makes it feel their insufficiency and emptiness. Often, while 
ignorant of its true object, it asks whence comes that fatal disen- 

1 See 1st part, lecture 1. a See lecture 5, Mysticism. 

15 



338 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

chantment by which all its successes, all its pleasures are succes- 
sively extinguished. If it knew how to read itself, it would re- 
cognize that if nothing here below satisfies it, it is because its ob- 
ject is more elevated, because the true bourne after which it as- 
pires is infinite perfection. Finally, like thought and love, human 
activity is without limits. Who can say where it shall stop ? 
Behold this earth almost known. Soon another world will be 
necessary for us. Man is journeying towards the infinite, which 
is always receding before him, which he always pursues. He 
conceives it, he feels it, he bears it, thus to speak, in himself, — 
how should his end be elsewhere ? Hence that unconquerable 
instinct of immortality, that universal hope of another life to 
which all worships, all poesies, all traditions bear witness. We 
tend to the infinite with all our powers ; death comes to interrupt 
the destiny that seeks its goal, and overtakes it unfinished. It 
is, therefore, likely that there is something after death, since at 
death nothing in us is terminated. Look at the flower that to- 
morrow will not be. To-day, at least, it is entirely developed : 
we can conceive nothing more beautiful of its kind ; it has at- 
tained its perfection. My perfection, my moral perfection, that of 
which I have the clearest idea and the most invincible need, for 
which I feel that I am born, — in vain I call for it, in vain I labor 
for it ; it escapes me, and leaves me only hope. Shall this hope 
be deceived ? All beings attain their end ; should man alone 
not attain his ? Should the greatest of creatures be the most ill- 
treated ? But a being that should remain incomplete and un- 
finished, that should not attain the end which all his instincts 
proclaim for him, would be a monster in the eternal order, — a 
problem much more difficult to solve than the difficulties that 
have been raised against the immortality of the soul. In our 
opinion, this tendency of all the desires and all the powers of the 
soul towards the infinite, elucidated by the principle of final 
causes, is a serious and important confirmation of the moral proof 
and the metaphysical proof of another life. 

When we have collected all the arguments that authorize be- 



GOD THE TKIXCirLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 339 

lief in another life, and when we have thus arrived at a satisfying 

demonstration, there remains an obstacle to be overcome. Im- 

g :ion cannot contemplate without fright that unknown which 

led death. The greatest philosopher in the world, says Pas- 
cal, on a plank wider than it is necessary in order to go without 
danger from one side of an abyss to the other, cannot think with- 
out trembling on the abyss that is beneath him. It is not reason, 
it is imagination that frightens him : it is also imagination that 
in great part causes that remnant of doubt, that trouble, that 
secret anxiety which the firmest faith cannot always succeed in 
overcoming in the presence of death. The religious man expe- 

bs this terror, but he knows whence it comes, and he sur- 
mounts it by a: timself to the solid hopes furnished him 
by reason and the heart. Imagination is a child that must be 
educated, by putting it under the discipline and government of 

r faculties ; it must be accustomed to o;o to intelligence for 
aid instead oi troubling intelligence with its phantoms. Let us 
acknowledge that there is a terrible step to be taken when we 
death. Nature trembles when face to face with the un- 
known eternity. It is wise to present ourselves there with all 
our forces united, — reason and the heart lending each other 
mutual support, the imagination being subdued or charmed. 
Let us continually repeat that, in death as in life, the soul is sure 
to rind God, and that with God all is just, all is good. 1 



1 4th Series, vol. iii., N Eo-jK - I : "After all. the existence of a divine 
Providence is, to my eyes, a truth clearer than all lights, more certain than 
all mathematics Yes, there is ■ God, a God who is a true intelligence, who 
consequently has a consciousness of himself, who has made and ordered 
every thing with weight and measure, whose works are excellent, whose 
ends are adorable, even when they are veiled from our feeble eyes. This 
world has a perfect author, perfectly wise and good. Man is not an orphan ; 
he has a father in heaven. What will this father do with his child when he 
returns to him I Nothing but what is good. Whatever happens, all will bo 
well. Every thing that he has done has been done well : every tlr 
he shall do, I accept beforehand, and bless. Yes, such is my unalterable 
faith, and this faith is my support, my refuge, my consolation, my solace in 
this fearful moment." 



340 LECTUEE SIXTEENTH. 

We now know what God truly is. We have already seen two 
of his adorable attributes, — truth and beauty. The most august 
attribute is revealed to us, — holiness. God is the holy of holies, 
as the author of the moral law and the good, as the principle of 
liberty, justice, and charity, as the dispenser of penalty and re- 
ward. Such a God is not an abstract God, but an intelligent and 
free person, who has made us in his own image, from whom we 
hold the law itself that presides over our destiny, whose judg- 
ments we await. It is his love that inspires us in our acts of 
charity ; it is his justice that governs our justice, that of our so- 
cieties and our laws. If we do not continually remind ourselves 
that he is infinite, we degrade his nature ; but he would be for 
us as if he were not, if his infinite essence had no forms that per- 
tain to us, the proper forms of our reason and our soul. 

By thinking upon such a being, man feels a sentiment that is 
par excellence the religious sentiment, All the beings with whom 
we are in relation awaken in us different sentiments, according to 
the qualities that we perceive in them ; and should he who pos- 
sesses all perfections excite in us no particular sentiment? When 
we think upon the infinite essence of God, when we are pene- 
trated with his omnipotence, when we are reminded that the 
moral law expresses his will, that he attaches to the fulfilment 
and the violation of this law recompenses and penalties which he 
dispenses with an inflexible justice, we cannot guard ourselves 
against an emotion of respect and fear at the idea of such a gran- 
deur. Then, if we come to consider that this all-powerful being 
has indeed wished to create us, us of whom he has no need, that 
in creating us he has loaded us with benefits, that he has given 
us this admirable universe for enjoying its ever-new beauties, so- 
ciety for ennobling our life in' that of our fellow-men, reason for 
thinking, the heart for loving, liberty for acting ; without disap- 
pearing, respect and fear are tinged with a sweeter sentiment, 
that of love. Love, when it is applied to feeble and limited 
beings, inspires us with a desire to do good to them ; but in itself 
it proposes to itself no advantage from the person loved ; we love 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 341 

a beautiful or good object, because it is beautiful or good, with- 
out at first regarding whether this love may be useful to its 
object and ourselves. For a still stronger reason, love, when it 
ascends to God, is a pure homage rendered to his perfections ; 
it is the natural overflow of the soul towards a being infinitely 
lovable. 

Respect and love compose adoration. True adoration does not 
exist without possessing both of these sentiments. If you consider 
only the all-powerful God, master of heaven and earth, author 
and avenger of justice, you crush man beneath the weight of the 
grandeur of God and his own feebleness, you condemn him to a 
continual trembling in the uncertainty of God's judgments, you 
make him hate the world, life, and himself, for every thing is full 
of misery.* Towards this extreme, Port-Royal inclines. Read the 
Pensees de Pascal. 1 In his great humility, Pascal forgets two 
things, — the dignity of man and the love of God. On the other 
hand, if you see only the good God and the indulgent father, you 
incline to a chimerical mysticism. By substituting love for fear, 
little by little with fear, we run the risk of losing respect. God 
is no more a master, he is no more even a father ; for the idea of 
a father still to a certain point involves that of a respectful fear ; 
he is no more any thing but a friend, sometimes even a lover. 
True adoration does not separate love and respect; it is respect 
animated by love. 

Adoration is a universal sentiment. It differs in degrees ac- 
cording to different natures ; it takes the most different forms ; it 
is often even ignorant of itself; sometimes it is revealed by an 
exclamation springing from the heart, in the midst of the great 
scenes of nature and life, sometimes it silently rises in the mute 
and penetrated soul ; it may err in its expressions, even in its 
object ; but at bottom it is always the same. It is a spontaneous, 
irresistible emotion of the soul ; and when reason is applied to it, 
it is declared just and legitimate. What, in fact, is more just 

1 See our discussion on the Pensees de Pascal, vol. i. of the 4th Series. 

13 



342 LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

than to fear the judgments of him who is holiness itself, who 
knows our actions and our intentions, and will judge them ac- 
cording to the highest justice ? What, too, is more just than to 
love perfect goodness and the source of all love ? Adoration is 
at first a natural sentiment ; reason makes it a duty. 

Adoration confined to the sanctuary of the soul is what 
is called internal worship — the necessary principle of all public 
worships. 

Public worship is no more an arbitrary institution than society 
and government, language and arts. All these things have their 
roots in human nature. Adoration abandoned to itself, would 
easily degenerate into dreams and ecstasy, or would be dissipated 
in the rush of affairs and the necessities of every day. The more 
energetic it is, the more it tends to express itself o inwardly in 
acts that realize it, to take a sensible, precise, and regular form, 
which, by a proper reaction on the sentiment that produced it, 
awakens it when it slumbers, sustains it when it languishes, and 
also protects it against extravagances of every kind to which it 
might give birth in so many feeble or unbridled imaginations. 
Philosophy, then, lays the natural foundation of public worship 
in the internal worship of adoration. Having arrived at that 
point, it stops, equally careful not to betray its rights and not to 
go beyond them, to run over, in its whole extent and to its farthest 
limit, the domain of natural reason, as well as not to usurp a for- 
eign domain. 

But philosophy does not think of trespassing on the ground of 
theology ; it wishes to remain faithful to itself, and also to follow 
its true mission, which is to love and favor every thing that tends 
to elevate man, since it heartily applauds the awakening of reli- 
gious and Christian sentiment in all noble souls, after the ravages 
that have been made on every hand, for more than a century, by 
a false and sad philosophy. What, in fact, would not have been 
the joy of a Socrates and a Plato if they had found the human 
race in the arms of Christianity ! How happy would Plato — 
who was so evidently embarrassed between his beautiful doctrines 



GOD THE PKIXCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 343 

and the religion of his times, who managed so carefully with that 
religion even when he avoided it, who was forced to take from it 
the best possible part, in order to aid a favorable interpretation of 
his doctrine — have been, if he had had to do with a religion which 
presents to man, as at once its author and its model, the sublime 
and mild Crucified, of whom he had an extraordinary presenti- 
ment, whom he almost described in the person of a just man 
dying on the cross ; J a religion which came to announce, or at 
least to consecrate and expand the idea of the unity of God and 
that of the unity of the human race ; which proclaims the equality 
of all souls before the divine law, which thereby has prepared and 
maintains civil equalitv ; which prescribes charity still more than 
justice, which teaches man that he does not live by bread alone, 
that he is not wholly contained in his senses and his body, that 
he has a soul, a free soul, whose value is infinite, above the value 
of all worlds, that life is a trial, that its true object is not pleasure, 
fortune, rank, none of those things that do not pertain to our real 
destiny, and are often more dangerous than useful, but is that 
alone which is always in our power, in all situations and all con- 
ditions, from end to end of the earth, to wit, the improvement of 
the soul by itself, in the holy hope of becoming from day to day 
le*ss unworthy of the regard of the Father of men, of the examples 
given by him, and of his promises. If the greatest moralist that 
ever lived could have seen these admirable teachings, which in 
germ were already at the foundation of his spirit, of which more 
than one trait can be found in his works, if he had seen them 
consecrated, maintained, continually recalled to the heart and 
imagination of man by sublime and touching institutions, what 
would have been his tender and grateful sympathy for such a re- 
ligion ! If he had come in our own times, in that age given up 
to revolutions, in which the best souls were early infected by the 
breath of skepticism, in default of the faith of an Augustine, ot' an 
Anselm, of a Thomas, of a Bossuet, he would have had. we doubt 

1 See the end of the first book of the Eepullic, vol. ix. of our translation. 



34:4: LECTURE SIXTEENTH. 

not, the sentiments at least of a Montesquieu, 1 of a Turgot, 9 of a 
Franklin, 3 and very far from putting the Christian religion and a 
good philosophy at war with each other, he would have been 
forced to unite them, to elucidate and fortify them by each other. 
That great mind and that great heart, which dictated to him the 
Phedon, the Gorgias, the Republic, would also have taught him 
that such books are made for a few sages, that there is needed 
for the human race a philosophy at once similar and different, 
that this philosophy is a religion, and that this desirable and ne- 
cessary religion is the Gospel. We do not hesitate to say that, 
without religion, philosophy, reduced to what it can laboriously 
draw from perfected natural reason, addresses itself to a very 
small number, and runs the risk of remaining without much influ- 
ence on manners and life; and that, without philosophy, the 
purest religion is no security against many superstitions, which 
little by little bring all the rest, and for that reason it may see the 
best minds escaping its influence, as was the case in the eighteenth 
century. The alliance between true religion and true philosophy 
is, then, at once natural and necessary ; natural by the common 
basis of the truths which they acknowledge ; necessary for the 
better service of humanity. Philosoplrv and religion differ only 
in the forms that distinguish, without separating them. Another 
auditory, other forms, and another language. When St. Augus- 
tine speaks to all the faithful in the church of Hippone, do not 
seek in him the subtile and profound metaphysician who com- 
bated the Academicians with their own arms, who supports 
himself on the Platonic theory of ideas, in order to explain the 
creation. Bossuet, in the treatise De la Connaissance de Dieu et 



1 Esprit des Lois, 

a Works of Turgot, vol. ii., Discours en Sorhonne sur les Avantages que V Han 
olissement du Ukristianism a procures au Genre Humain, etc. 

3 In the Correspondence, the letter to Dr. Stiles, March 9, 1790, written by- 
Franklin a few months before his death : " I am convinced that the moral 
and religious system which Jesus Christ has transmitted to us is the best 
that the world has seen or can see." — We here re-translate, not having the 
works of Franklin immediately at hand. 



GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. 345 

Soi-meme, is no longer, and at the same time he is always, the 
author of the Sermons, of the Elevations, and the incomparable 
Catechisme de Meaux. To separate religion and philosophy has 
always been, on one side or the other, the pretension of small, 
exclusive, and fanatical minds ; the duty, more imperative now 
than ever, of whomsoever has for either a serious and enlightened 
love, is to bring together and unite, instead of dividing and wast- 
ing the powers of the mind and the soul, in the interest of the 
common cause and the great object which the Christian religion 
and philosophy pursue, each in its own way, — I mean the moral 
grandeur of humanity. 1 



1 TVe have not ceased to claim, to earnestly call for, the alliance between 
Christianity and philosophy, as well as the alliance between the monarchy 
and liberty. See particularly 3d Series, vol. iv., PMlosophie Contemporaine, 
preface of the second edition ; 4th Series, vol. i., Pascal, 1st and 2d preface, 
passim; 5th Series, vol. ii/, Discours a la Chambre des Paris pour le Defence 
de V Universite et de la Philosophie. We everywhere profess the most tender 
veneration for Christianity, — we have only repelled the servitude of philoso- 
phy, with Descartes, and the most illustrious doctors of ancient and modern 
times, from St. Augustine and St. Thomas, to the Cardinal de la Lucerne 
and the Bishop of Hermopolis. Moreover, we love to think that those quar- 
rels, originating: in other times from the deplorable strife hetween the 
clergy and the University, have not survived it, and that now all sincere 
friends of religion and philosophy will give each other the hand, and will work 
in concert to encourage desponding souls and lift up burdened characters. 

^15* 



LECTUKE XVII. 

RESUME OF DOCTEIXE. 

Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the three orders of 
facts on which this doctrine rests, with the relation of each one of them 
to the modern school that has recognized and developed it, but almost 
always exaggerated it. — Experience and empiricism. — Eeason and ideal- 
ism. — Sentiment and mysticism. — Theodicea. Defects of different known 
systems. — The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the character 
of certainty and reality that this process'gives to it. 

Having arrived at the limit of this course, we have a final 
task to perform, — it is necessary to recall its general spirit and 
most important results. 

From the first lecture, I have signalized to you the spirit that 
should animate this instruction, — a spirit of free inquiry, recog- 
nizing with joy the truth wherever found, profiting by all the 
systems that the eighteenth century has bequeathed to our times, 
but confining itself to none of them. 

The eighteenth century has left to us as an inheritance three 
great schools which still endure — the English and French school, 
whose chief is Locke, among wdiose most accredited representa- 
tives are Condillac, Helvetius, and Saint-Lambert; the Scotch 
school, with so many celebrated names, Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, 
Beattie, Ferguson, and Dugald Stewart; 1 the German school, or 
rather school of Kant, for, of all the philosophers beyond the 
Rhine, the philosopher of Kcenigsberg is almost the only one 
who belongs. to history. Kant died at the beginning of the nine- 

1 Still liviDg in 1818, died in 1828. 



EESUME OF DOCTRINE. 347 

teenth" century ; x the ashes of his most illustrious disciple, Fichte, 2 
are scarcely cold. The other renowned philosophers of Germany 
still live, 3 and escape our valuation. 

But this is only an ethnographical enumeration of the schools 
of the eighteenth century. It is above all necessary to consider 
them in their characters, analogous or opposite. The Anglo- 
French school particularly represents empiricism and sensualism, 
that is to say, an almost exclusive importance attributed in all 
parts of human knowledge to experience in general, and especially 
to sensible experience. The Scotch school and the German school 
represent a more or less developed spiritualism. Finally, there 
are philosophers, for example, Hutcheson, Smith, and others, 
who, mistrusting the senses and reason, give the supremacy to 
sentiment. 

Such are the philosophic schools in the presence of which the 
nineteenth century is placed. 

We are compelled to avow, that none of these, to our eyes, 
contains the entire truth. It has been demonstrated that a con- 
siderable part of knowledge escapes sensation, and we think that 
sentiment is a basis neither sufficiently firm, nor sufficiently 
broad, to support all human science. We are, therefore, rather 
the adversary than the partisan of the school of Locke and Con- 
dillac, and of that of Hutcheson and Smith. Are we on that ac- 
count the disciple of Reid and Kant ? Yes, certainly, we declare 
our preference for the direction impressed upon philosophy by 
these two great men. We regard Reid as common sense itself, 
and we believe that we thus eulogize him in a manner that would 
touch him most. Common sense is to us the only legitimate 
point of departure, and the constant and inviolable rule of science. 
Reid never errs ; his method is true, his general principles are 
incontestable, but we will willingly say to this irreproachable 

1 In 1804. 2 Died, 1814. 

8 This was said in 1818. Since then, Jacobi, Hegel, and Schleiennacher, 
with so many others, have disappeared. Schelling alone survives the ruins 
of the German philosophy. 



348 LECTURE SVENTEENTH. 

genius, — Sapere aude. Kant is far from being as sure a guide 
as Reid. Both excel in analysis ; but Reid stops there, and Kant 
builds upon analysis a system irreconcilable with it. He elevates 
reason above sensation and sentiment ; he shows with great skill 
how reason produces by itself, and by the laws attached to its 
exercise, nearly all human knowledge ; there is only one misfor- 
tune, which is that all this fine edifice is destitute of reality. 
Dogmatical in analysis, Kant is skeptical in his conclusions. His 
skepticism is the most learned, most moral, that ever existed ; 
but, in fine, it is always skepticism. This is saying plainly enough 
that we are far from belonging to the school of the philosopher 
of Kcenigsberg. 

In general, in the history of philosophy, we are in favor of sys- 
tems that are themselves in favor of reason. Accordingly, in an- 
tiquity, we side with Plato against his adversaries ; among the 
moderns, with Descartes against Locke, with Reid against Hume, 
with Kant against both Condillac and Smith. But while we 
acknowledge reason as a power superior to sensation and senti- 
ment, as being, par excellence, the faculty of every kind of knowl- 
edge, the faculty of the true, the faculty of the beautiful, the 
faculty of the good, we are persuaded that reason cannot be de- 
veloped without conditions that are foreign to it, cannot suffice 
for the government of man without the aid of another power : 
that power which is not reason, which reason cannot do without, 
is sentiment ; those conditions, without which reason cannot be 
developed, are the senses. It is seen what for us is the import- 
ance of sensation and sentiment: how, consequently, it is impos- 
sible for us absolutely to condemn either the philosophy of sensa- 
tion, or, much more, that of sentiment. 

Such are the very simple foundations of our eclecticism. It is 
not in us the fruit of a desire for innovation, and for making our- 
self a place apart among the historians of philosophy ; no, it is 
philosophy itself that imposes on us our historical views. It is 
not our fault if God has made the human soul larger than all 
systems, and we also aver that we are also much rejoiced that all 



RESUME OF DOCTEINE. 349 

systems are not absurd. Without giving the lie to the most cer- 
tain facts signalized and established by ourself, it was indeed 
necessary, on finding them scattered in the history of philosophy, 
to recognize and respect them, and if the history of philosophy, 
thus considered, no longer appeared a mass of senseless systems, 
a chaos, without light, and without issue ; if, on the contrary, it 
became, in some sort, a living philosophy, that was, it should 
seem, a progress on which one might felicitate himself, one of the 
most fortunate conquests of the nineteenth century, the very tri- 
umphing of the philosophic spirit. 

We have, therefore, no doubt in regard to the excellence of 
the enterprise; the whole question for us is in the execution. 
Let us see, let us compare what we have done with what we have 
wished to dp. 

Let us ask, in the first place, whether we have been just to- 
wards that great philosophy represented in antiquity by Aristotle, 
whose best model among the moderns is the wise author of the 
Essay on the Human Understanding '. 

There is in the philosophy of sensation what is true and what 
is false. The false is the pretension of explaining all human 
knowledge by the acquisitions of the senses ; this pretension is 
the system itself ; we reject it, and the system with it. The true 
is that sensibility, considered in its external and visible organs, 
and in its internal organs, the invisible seats of the vital func- 
tions, is the indispensable condition of the development of all 
our faculties, not only of the faculties that evidently pertain to 
sensibility, but of those that seem to be most remote from it. 
This true side of sensualism we have everywhere recognized and 
elucidated in metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, and theodicea. 

For us, theodicea, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, rest on psy- 
chology, and the first principle of our psychology is that the 
condition of all exercise of mind and soul is an impression made 
on our organs, and a movement of the vital functions. 

Man is not a pure spirit ; he has a body which is for the spirit 
sometimes an obstacle, sometimes a means, always an inseparable 



350 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

companion. The senses are not, as Plato and Malebranche have 
too often said, a prison for the soul, but much rather windows 
looking out upon nature, through which the soul communicates 
with the universe. There is an entire part of Locke's polemic 
against the theories of innate ideas that is to our eyes perfectly 
true. We are the first to invoke experience in philosophy. Ex- 
perience saves philosophy from hypothesis, from abstraction, 
from the exclusively deductive method, that is to say, from the 
geometrical method. It is on account of having abandoned the 
solid ground of experience, that Spinoza, attaching himself to 
certain sides of Cartesianism, 1 and closing his eyes to all the 
others, forgetting its method, its essential character, and its most 
certain principles, reared a hypothetical system, or made from an 
arbitrary definition spring with the last degree of rigor a whole 
series of deductions, which have nothing to do with reality. It 
is also on account of having exchanged experience for a sys- 
tematic analysis, that Condillac, an unfaithful disciple of Locke, 
undertook to draw from a single fact, and from an ill-observed 
fact, all knowledge, by the aid of a series of verbal transforma- 
tions, whose last result is a nominalism, like that of the later 
scholastics. Experience does not contain all science, but it fur- 
nishes the conditions of all science. Space is nothing for us with- 
out visible and tangible bodies that occupy it, time is nothing 
without the succession of events, cause without its effects, sub- 
stance without its modes, law without the phenomena that it 
rules. 2 Reason would reveal to us no universal and necessary 
truth, if consciousness and the senses did not suggest to us par- 
ticular and contingent notions. In aesthetics, while severely dis- 
tinguishing between the beautiful and the agreeable, we have 
shown that the agreeable is the constant accompaniment of the 
beautiful, 3 and that if art has for its supreme law the expression 
of the ideal, it must express it under an animated and living form 

1 Fragments de Philosophie Cartesienne, p. 429 : Bes Rapports du GarU- 
aienisme et du Sjiinozisme. 
3 Part 1st, lectures 1 and 2. a Part 2d. 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 351 

which puts it in relation with our senses, with our imagination, 
above all, with our heart. In ethics, if we have placed Kant and 
stoicism far above epicureanism and Helvetius, we have guarded 
ourselves against an insensibility and an asceticism which are con- 
trary to human nature. We have given to reason neither the 
duty nor the right to smother the natural passions, but to rule 
them ; we have not wished to wrest from the soul the instinct of 
happiness, without which life would not be supportable for a 
day, nor society for an hour ; we have proposed to enlighten this 
instinct, to show it the concealed but real harmony which it sus- 
tains with virtue, and to open to it infinite prospects. 1 

With these empirical elements, idealism is guarded from that 
mystical infatuation which, little by little, gains and seizes it 
when it is wholly alone, and brings it into discredit with sound 
and severe minds. In our works — and why should we not say 
it ? — we have often presented the thought of Locke, whom we 
regard as one of the best and most sensible men that ever lived. 
He is among those secret and illustrious advisers with whom we 
support our weakness. More than one happy thought we owe 
to him ; and we often ask ourself whether investigations directed 
with the circumspect method which we try to carry into ours, 
would not have been accepted by his sincerity and wisdom. 
Locke is for us the true representative, the most original, and al- 
together the most temperate of the empirical school Tied to a 
system, he still preserves a rare spirit of liberty, — under the 
name of reflection he admits another source of knowledge than 
sensation ; and this concession to common sense is very impor- 
tant. Condillac, by rejecting this concession, carried to extremes 
and spoiled the doctrine of Locke, and made of it a narrow, ex- 
clusive, entirely false system, — sensualism, to speak properly. 
Condillac works upon chimeras reduced to signs, with which he 
sports at his ease. We seek in vain in his writings, especially in 
the last, some trace of human nature. One truly believes him- 

1 Part 8d. 



352 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

self to be in the realm of shades, per inania regno,} The Essay 
on the Human Understanding produces the opposite impression. 
Locke is a disciple of Descartes, whom the excesses of Male- 
branche have thrown to an opposite excess : he is one of the 
founders of psychology, he is one of the finest and most pro- 
found connoisseurs of human nature, and his doctrine, somewhat 
unsteady but always moderate, is worthy of having a place in a 
true eclecticism. 2 

By the side of the philosophy of Locke, there is one much 
greater, which it is important to preserve from all exaggeration, 
in order to maintain it in all its height. Founded in antiquity by 
Socrates, constituted by Plato, renewed by Descartes, idealism 
embraces, among the moderns, men of the highest renown. It 
speaks to man in the name of what is noblest in man. It de- 
mands the rights of reason ; it establishes in science, in art, and 
in ethics fixed and invariable principles, and from this imperfect 
existence it elevates us towards another world, the world of the 
eternal, of the infinite, of the absolute. 

This great philosophy has all our preferences, and we shall not 
be accused of having given it too little place in these lectures. 
In the eighteenth century it was especially represented in differ- 
ent degrees by Reid and Kant. We wholly accept Reid, with 
the exception of his historical views, which are too insufficient, 
and often mixed with error. 3 There are two parts in Kant, — the 
analytical part, and the dialectical part, as he calls them. 4 We 
admit the one and reject the other. In this whole course we 
have borrowed much from the Critique of Speculative Reason, 
the Critique of Judgment, and the Critique of Practical Reason. 
These three works are, in our eyes, admirable monuments of 



1 On Condillac, 1st Scries, vol. i., passim, and particularly vol. iii., lectures 
2 and 3. 

a We have never spoken of Locke except with sincere respect, even while 
combating him. See 1st Series, vol. i., course of 1817, Discowrs <P Ouverture, 
vol. ii. lecture 1, and especially 2d Series, vol. iii., passim. 

8 See 1st Seri( 

* Ibid., vol. v. 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 353 

philosophic genius, — the)' are filled with treasures of observation 
and analysis. 1 

With Reid and Kant, we recognize reason as the faculty of 
the true, the beautiful, and the good. It is to its proper virtue 
that we directly refer knowledge in its humblest and in its most 
elevated part. All the systematic pretensions of sensualism are 
broken against the manifest reality of universal and necessary 
truths which are incontestably in our mind. At each instant, 
whether -we know it or not, we bear universal and necessary 
judgments. In the simplest propositions is enveloped the prin- 
ciple of substance and being. We cannot take a step in life with- 
out concluding from an event in the existence of its cause. 
These principles are absolutely true, they are true everywhere 
and always. Xow, experience apprises us of what happens here 
and there, to-day or yesterday ; but of what happens everywhere 
and always, especially of what cannot but happen, how can it 
apprise us, since it is itself always limited to time and space ? 
There are, then, in man principles superior to experience. 

Such principles can alone give a firm basis to science. Phe- 
nomena are the objects of science only so far as they reveal some- 
thing superior to themselves, that is to say, laws. Natural his- 
tory does not study such or such an individual, but the generic 
type that every individual bears in itself, that alone remains un- 
changeable, when the individuals pass away and vanish. If 
there is in us no other faculty of knowing than sensation, we 
never know aught but what is passing in things, and that, too, 
we know only with the most uncertain knowledge, since sensi- 



1 For more than twenty years we have thought of translating and pub- 
lishing the three Critiques, joining to them a selection from the smaller pro- 
ductions of Kant. Time has been wanting to its for the completion of our 
design; but a young and skilful professor of philosophy, a graduate of the 
Normal School, has been willing to supply our place, and to undertake to 
give to the French public a faithful and intelligent version of the greatest 
thinker of the eighteenth century. M. Barni has worthily commenced the 
useful and difficult enterprise which we have remitted to his zeal, and pur- 
sues it with courage and talent. 



354 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

bility will be its only measure, which is so variable in itself and 
so different in different individuals. Each of us will have his 
own science, a science contradictory and fragile, which one mo- 
ment produces and another destroys, false as well as true, since 
what is true for me is false for you, and will even be false for 
me in a little while. Such are science and truth in the doctrine 
of sensation. On the contrary, necessary and immutable prin- 
ciples found a science necessary and immutable as themselves, — 
the truth which they gave us is neither mine nor yours, neither 
the truth of to-day, nor that of to-morrow, but truth in itself. 

The same spirit transferred to aesthetics has enabled us to 
seize the beautiful by the side of the agreeable, and, above differ- 
ent and imperfect beauties which nature offers to us, to seize an 
ideal beauty, one and perfect, without a model in nature, and the 
only model worthy of genius. 

In ethics we have shown that there is an essential distinction 
between good and evil ; that the idea of the good is an idea just 
as absolute as the idea of the beautiful and that of the true ; 
that the good is a universal and necessary truth, marked with 
the particular character that it ought to be practised. By the 
side of interest, which is the law of sensibility, reason has made 
us recognize the law of duty, which a free being can alone fulfil. 
From these ethics has sprung a generous political doctrine, giving 
to right a sure foundation in the respect due to the person, estab- 
lishing true liberty, and true equality, and calling for institutions, 
protective of both, which do not rest on the mobile and arbitrary 
will of the legislator, whether people or monarch, but on the na- 
ture of things, on truth and justice. 

From empiricism we have retained the maxim which gives 
empiricism its whole force — that the conditions of science, of art, 
of ethics, are in experience, and often in sensible experience. 
But we profess at the same time this other maxim, that the 
foundation of science is absolute truth, that the direct foundation 
of art is absolute beauty, that the direct foundation of ethics and 
politics is the good, is duty, is right, and that what reveals to us 



EESUME OF DOCTRINE. 355 

these absolute ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good, is 
reason. The foundation of our doctrine is, therefore, idealism 
rightly tempered by empiricism. 

But what would be the use of having restored to reason the 
power of elevating itself to absolute principles, placed above ex- 
perience, although experience furnishes their external conditions, 
if, to adopt the language of Kant, 1 these principles have no ob- 
jective value ? What good could result from having determined 
with a precision until then unknown the respective domains of 
experience and reason, if, wholly superior as it is to the senses 
and experience, reason is captive in their inclosure, and we know 
nothing beyond with certainty ? Thereby, then, we return by a 
detour to skepticism to which sensualism conducts us directly, 
and at less expense. To say that there is no principle of causal- 
ity, or to say that this principle has no force out of the subject 
that possesses it, — is it not saying the same thing ? Kant avows 
that man has no right to affirm that there are out of him real 
causes, time, or space, or that he himself has a spiritual and free 
soul. This acknowledgment would perfectly satisfy Hume ; it 
would be of very little importance to him that the reason of man, 
according to Kant, might conceive, and even could not but con- 
ceive, the ideas of cause, time, space, liberty, spirit, provided 
these ideas are applied to nothing real. I see therein, at most, 
only a torment for human reason, at once so poor and so rich, so 
full and so void. 

A third doctrine, finding sensation insufficient, and also discon- 
tented with reason, which it confounds with reasoning, thinks to 
approach common sense by making science, art, and ethics rest on 
sentiment. It would have us confide ourselves to the instinct of 
the heart, to that instinct, nobler than sensation, and more subtle 
than reasoning. Is it not the heart, in fact, that feels the beau- 
tiful and the good ? Is it not the heart that, in all the great cir- 
cumstances of life, when passion and sophism obscure to our eyes 

1 Part 1st, Lecture 3. 



356 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

the holy idea of duty and virtue, makes it shine forth with an 
irresistible light, and, at the same time, warms us, animates us, 
and gives us the courage to practise it ? 

We also have recognized that admirable phenomenon which is 
called sentiment ; we even believe that here will be found a more 
precise and more complete analysis of it than in the writings 
where sentiment reigns alone. Yes, there is an exquisite pleas- 
ure attached to the contemplation of the truth, to the reproduc- 
tion of the beautiful, to the practice of the good ; there is in us 
an innate love for all these things ; and when great rigor is not 
aimed at, it may very well be said that it is the heart which dis- 
cerns truth, that the heart is and ought to be the light and guide 
of our life. 

To the eyes of an unpractised analysis, reason in its natural 
and spontaneous exercise is confounded with sentiment by a 
multitude of resemblances. 1 Sentiment is intimately attached to 
reason ; it is its sensible form. At the foundation of sentiment 
is reason, which communicates to it its authority, whilst senti- 
ment lends to reason its charm and power. Is not the widest 
spread and the most touching proof of the existence of God that 
spontaneous impulse of the heart which, in the consciousness of 
our miseries, and at the sight of the imperfections of our race 
which press upon our attention, irresistibly suggests to us the 
confused idea of an infinite and perfect being, fills us, at this 
idea, with an inexpressible emotion, moistens our eyes with tears, 
or even prostrates us on our knees before him whom the heart 
reveals to us, even when the reason refuses to believe in him ? 
But look more closely, and you will see that this incredulous 
reason is reasoning supported by principles whose bearing is in- 
sufficient ; you will see that what reveals the infinite and perfect 
being is precisely reason itself ; 2 and that, in turn, it is this rev- 



1 Lecture 5, Mysticism. 

2 This pretended proof of sentiment is, in fact, the Cartesian proof itself. 
See lecturea 4 and 16. 



KESUME OF DOCTRINE. 357 

elation of the infinite by reason, which, passing into sentiment, 
produces the emotion and the inspiration that we have mentioned. 
May heaven grant that we shall never reject the aid of sentiment! 
On the contrary, we invoke it both for others and ourself. Here 
we are with the people, or rather we are the people. It is to the 
light of the heart, which is borrowed from that of reason, but re- 
flects it more vividly in the depths of the soul, that we confide 
ourselves, in order to preserve all great truths in the soul of the 
ignorant, and even to save them in the mind of the philosopher 
from the aberrations or refinements of an ambitious philosophy. 

We think, with Quintilian and Vauvenargues, that the nobility 
of sentiment makes the nobility of thought. Enthusiasm is the 
principle of great works as well as of great actions. Without the 
love of the beautiful, the artist will produce only works that are 
perhaps regular but frigid, that will possibly please the geometri- 
cian, but not the man of taste. In order to communicate life to 
the canvas, to the marble, to speech, it must be born in one's self. 
It is the heart mingled with logic that makes true eloquence ; it 
is the heart mingled with imagination that makes great poetry. 
Think of Homer, of Corneille, of Bossuet, — their most character- 
istic trait is pathos, and pathos is a cry of the soul. But it is 
especially in ethics that sentiment shines forth. Sentiment, as 
we have already said, is as it were a divine grace that aids us in 
the fulfilment of the serious and austere law of duty. How often 
does it happen that in delicate, complicated, difficult situations, 
we know not how to ascertain wherein is the true, wherein is the 
good ! Sentiment comes to the aid of reasoning which wavers ; 
it speaks, and all uncertainties are dissipated. In listening to its 
inspirations, we may act imprudently, but we rarely act ill : the 
voice of the heart is the voice of God. 

We, therefore, give a prominent place to this noble element of 
human nature. We believe that man is quite as great by heart 
as by reason. We have a high regard for the generous writers 
who, in the looseness of principles and manners in the eighteenth 
century, opposed the baseness of calculation and interest with the 



358 LECTUKE SEVENTEENTH. 

beauty of sentiment. We are with Hutclieson against Hobbes, 
with Rousseau against Helvetius, with the author of Woldemar 1 
against the ethics of egoism or those of the schools. We borrow 
from them what truth they have, we leave their useless or dan- 
gerous exaggerations. Sentiment must be joined to reason ; but 
reason must not be replaced by sentiment. In the first place, it 
is contrary to facts to take reason for reasoning, and to envelop 
them in the same criticism. And then, after all, reasoning is the 
legitimate instrument of reason ; its value is determined by that 
of the principles on which it rests. In the next place, reason, and 
especially spontaneous reason, is, like sentiment, immediate and 
direct; it goes straight to its object, without passing through 
analysis, abstraction, and deduction, excellent operations without 
doubt, but they suppose a primary operation, the pure and simple 
apperception of the truth. 2 It is wrong to attribute this apper- 
ception to sentiment. Sentiment is an emotion, not a judgment ; 
it enjoys or suffers, it loves or hates, it does not know. It is not 
universal like reason ; and as it still pertains on some side to or- 
ganization, it even borrows from the organization something of 
its inconstancy. In fine, sentiment follows reason, and does not 
precede it. Therefore, in suppressing reason, we suppress the 
sentiment which emanates from it, and science, art, and ethics 
lack firm and solid bases. 

Psychology, aesthetics, and ethics, have conducted us to an 
order of investigations more difficult and more elevated, which 
are mingled with all the others, and crown them — theodicea. 

We know that theodicea is the rock of philosophy. We 
might shun it, and stop in the regions — already very high — of 
the universal and necessary principles of the true, the beautiful, 
and the good, without going farther, without ascending to the 
principles of these principles, to the reason of reason, to the source 



1 M. Jacobi. See the Manual of the History of Philosophy, by Tenncmann, 
vol. ii., p. 318. 
3 On spontaneous reason and reflective reason, see 1st part, lect. 2 and 3. 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 359 

of truth. But such a prudence is, at bottom, only a disguised 
skepticism. Either philosophy is not, or it is the last explanation 
of all things. Is it, then, true that God is to us an inexplicable 
enigma, — he without whom the most certain of all things that 
thus far we have discovered would be for us an insupportable 
enigma ? If philosophy is incapable of arriving at the knowledge 
of God, it is powerless ; for if it does not possess God, it possesses 
nothing. But we are convinced that the need of knowing has 
not been given us in vain, and that the desire of knowing the 
principle of our being bears witness to the right and power of 
knowing which we have. Accordingly, after having discoursed 
to you about the true, the beautiful, and the good, we have not 
feared to speak to you of God. 

More than one road may lead us to God. "We do not pretend 
to close any of them ; but it was necessary for us to follow the 
one that was open to us, that which the nature and subject of 
our instruction opened to us. 

Universal and necessary truths are not general ideas which our 
mind draws by way of reasoning from particular things ; for par- 
ticular things are relative and contingent, and cannot contain the 
universal and necessary. On the other hand, these truths do not 
subsist by themselves ; they would thus be only pure abstractions, 
suspended in vacuity and without relation to any thing. Truth, 
beauty, and goodness are attributes and not entities, if ow there 
are no attributes without a subject. And as here the question 
is concerning absolute truth, beauty and goodness, their substance 
can be nothing else than absolute being. It is thus that we 
arrive at God. Once more, there are many other means of arri- 
ving at him ; but we hold fast to this legitimate and sure way. 

For us, as for Plato, whom we have defended against a too 
narrow interpretation, 1 absolute truth is in God, — it is God him- 
self under one of his phases. Since Plato, the greatest minds, 
Saint Augustine, Descartes, Bossuet, Leibnitz, agree in putting in 

1 Lectures 4 and 5. 



360 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

God, as in their source, the principles of knowledge as well as 
existence. From him things derive at once their intelligibility 
and their being. It is by the participation of the divine reason 
that our reason possesses something absolute. Every judgment 
of reason envelops a necessary truth, and every necessary truth 
supposes necessary being. 

If all perfection belongs to the perfect being, God will possess 
beauty in its plenitude. The father of the world, of its laws, of 
its ravishing harmonies, the author of forms, colors, and sounds, 
he is the principle of beauty in nature. It is he whom we adore, 
without knowing it, under the name of the ideal, when our imag- 
ination, borne on from beauties to beauties, calls for a final beauty 
in which it may find repose. It is to him that the artist, discon- 
tented with the imperfect beauties of nature and those that he 
creates himself, comes to ask for higher inspirations. It is in him 
that are summed up the main forms of every kind of beauty, the 
beautiful and the sublime, since he satisfies all our faculties by 
his perfections, and overwhelms them with his infinitude. 

God is the principle of moral truths, as well as of all other 
truths. All our duties are comprised in justice and charity. 
These two great precepts have not been made by us ; they have 
been imposed on us ; from whom, then, can they come, except 
from a legislator essentially just and good? Therein, in our 
opinion, is an invincible demonstration of the divine justice 
and charity: — this demonstration elucidates and sustains all 
others. In this immense universe, of which we catch a glimpse 
of a comparatively insignificant portion, every thing, in spite of 
more than one obscurity, seems ordered in view of general good, 
and this plan attests a Providence. To the physical order which 
one in good faith can scarcely deny, add the certainty, the evi- 
dence of the moral order that we bear in ourselves. This order 
supposes the harmony of virtue and goodness ; it therefore re- 
quires it. Without doubt this harmony already appears in the 
visible world, in the natural consequences of good and bad actions, 
in society which punishes and rewards, in public esteem and con- 



RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 361 

tempt, especially in the troubles and joys of conscience. Although 
this necessary law of order is not always exactly fulfilled, it never- 
theless ought to be, or the moral order is not satisfied, and the 
intimate nature of things, their moral nature, remains violated, 
troubled, perverted. There must, then, be a being who takes it 
upon himself to fulfil, in a time that he has reserved to himself, 
and in a manner that will be proper, the order of which he has 
put in us the inviolable need ; and this being is again, God. 

Thus, on all sides, on that of metaphysics, on that of aesthetics, 
especially on that of ethics, we elevate ourselves to the same prin- 
ciple, the common centre, the last foundation, of all truth, all 
beauty, all goodness. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are 
only different revelations of the same being. Human intelligence, 
interrogated in regard to all these ideas which are incontestably 
in it, always makes us the same response ; it sends us back to the 
same explanation, — at the foundation of all, above all, God, always 
God. 

We have arrived, then, from degree to degree, at religion. 
We are in fellowship with the great philosophies which all pro- 
claim a God, and. at the same time, with the religions that cover 
the earth, with the Christian religion, incomparably the most per- 
fect and the most holy. As long as philosophy has not reached 
natural religion, — and by this we meau, not the religion at which 
man arrives in that hypothetical state that is called the state of 
nature, but the religion which is revealed to us by the natural 
light accorded to all men, — it remains beneath all worship, even 
the most imperfect, which at least gives to man a father, a wit- 
ness, a consoler, a judge. A true theodicea borrows in some sort 
from all religious beliefs their common principle, and returns it to 
them surrounded with light, elevated above all uncertainty, 
guarded against all attack. Philosophy may present itself in its 
turn to mankind ; it also has a right to man's confidence, for it 
speaks to him of God in the name of all his needs and all his fac- 
ulties, in the name of reason and sentiment. 

Observe that we have arrived at these high conclusions without 
16 



362 "LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

any hypothesis, by the aid of processes at once very simple and 
perfectly rigorous. Truths of different orders being given, truths 
which have not been made by us, and are not sufficient for them- 
selves, we have ascended from these truths to their author, as one 
goes from the effect to the cause, from the sign to the thing sig- 
nified, from phenomenon to being, from quality to subject. These 
two principles — that every effect supposes a cause, and every 
quality a subject — are universal and necessary principles. They 
have been put by us in their full light, and demonstrated in the 
manner in which principles undemonstrable, because they are 
primitive, can be demonstrated. Moreover, to what are these 
necessary principles applied ? To metaphysical and moral truths, 
which are also necessary. It was therefore necessary to conclude 
in the existence of a cause and a necessary being, or, indeed, it 
was necessary to deny either the necessity of the principle of 
cause and the principle of substance, or the necessity of the truths 
to which we applied them, that is to say, to renounce all notions 
of common sense ; for these very principles and these truths, 
with their character of universality and necessity, compose com- 
mon sense. 

-Not only is it certain that every effect supposes a cause, and 
every quality a being, but it is equally certain that an effect of 
such a nature supposes a cause of the same nature, and that a 
quality or an attribute marked with such or such essential char- 
acters supposes a being in which these same characters are again 
found in an eminent degree. Whence it follows, that we have 
very legitimately concluded from truth in an intelligent cause and 
substance, from beauty in a being supremely beautiful, and from 
a moral law composed at once of justice and charity in a legisla- 
tor supremely just and supremely good. 

And we have not made a geometrical and algebraical theodi- 
cea, after the example of many philosophers, and the most illus- 
trious. We have not deduced the attributes of God from each 
other, as the different terms of an equation are converted, or as 
from one property of a triangle the other properties are deduced, 



EESUME OF DOCTKINE. 

tlius ending at a God wholly abstract, good perhaps for the 
schools, but not sufficient for the human race. We have given 
to theodicea a surer foundation — psychology. Our God is doubt- 
less also the author of the world, but he is especially the father of 
humanity ; his intelligence is ours, with the necessity of essence 
and infinite power added. So our justice and our charity, related 
to their immortal exemplar, give us an idea of the divine justice 
and charity. Therein we see a real God, with whom we can sus- 
tain a relation also real, whom we can comprehend and feel, and 
who in his turn can comprehend and feel our efforts, our suffer- 
ings, our virtues, our miseries. Made in his image, conducted to 
him by a ray of his own being, there is between him and us a 
living and sacred tie. 

Our theodicea is therefore free at once from hypothesis and ab- 
straction. By preserving ourselves from the one, we have pre- 
served ourselves from the other. Consenting to recognize God 
only in his signs visible to the eyes and intelligible to the mind, 
it is on infallible evidence that we have elevated ourselves to 
God. By a necessary consequence, setting out from real effects 
and real attributes, we have arrived at a real cause and a real 
substance, at a cause having in pow 7 er all its essential effects, at a 
substance rich in attributes. I wonder at the folly of those who, 
in order to know God better, consider him, they say, in his pure 
and absolute essence, disengaged from all limitative determina- 
tion. I believe that I have forever removed the root of such an 
extravagance. 1 No ; it is not true that the diversity of determi- 
nations, and, consequently, of qualities and attributes, destroys 
the absolute unity of a being ; the infallible proof of it is that my 
unity is not the least in the world altered by the diversity of my 
faculties. It is not true that unity excludes multiplicity, and 
multiplicity unity ; for unity and multiplicity are united in me. 
"Why then should they not be in God? Moreover, tar from 
altering unity in me, multiplicity develops it and makes its pro- 

1 See particularly lecture 5. 



364 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

ductiveness appear. So the richness of the determinations and 
the attributes of God is exactly the sign of the plenitude of his 
being. To neglect his attributes, is therefore to impoverish him ; 
we do not say enough, it is to annihilate him, — for a being with- 
out attributes exists not ; and the abstraction of being, human or 
divine, finite or infinite, relative or absolute, is nonentity. 

Theodicea has two rocks, — one, which wc have just signalized 
to you, is abstraction, the abuse of dialectics ; it is the vice of the 
schools and metaphysics. If we are forced to shun this rock, we 
run the risk of being dashed against the opposite rock, I mean 
that fear of reasoning that extends to reason, that excessive pre- 
dominance of sentiment, which developing in us the loving and 
affectionate faculties at the expense of all the others, throws us 
into anthropomorphism without criticism, and makes us institute 
with God an intimate and familiar intercourse in which we are 
somewhat too forgetful of the august and fearful majesty of the 
divine being. The tender and contemplative soul can neither 
love nor contemplate in God the necessity, the eternity, the infi- 
nity, that do not come within the sphere of imagination and the 
heart, that are only conceived. It therefore neglects them. 
Neither does it study God in truth of every kind, in physics, 
metaphysics, and ethics, which manifest him ; it considers in him 
particularly the characters to which affection is attached. In 
adoration, Fenelon retrenches all fear that nothing but love may 
subsist, and Mine. Guyon ends by loving God as a lover. 

We escape these opposite excesses of a refined sentimentality 
and a chimerical abstraction, by always keeping in mind both the 
nature of God, by which he escapes all relation with us, — neces- 
sity, eternity, infinity, and at the same time those of his attributes 
which are our own attributes transferred to him, for the very 
simple reason that they came from him. 

I am able to conceive God only in his manifestations and by 
the signs which he gives of his existence, as I am able to con- 
ceive any being only by the attributes of that being, a cause only 
by its effects, as I am able to conceive myself only by the exer 



EESTJME OF DOCTRINE. 365 

cise of my faculties. Take away my faculties and the consciouc- 
ness that attests them to me, and I am not for myself. It is the 
same with God, — take away nature and the soul, and every sign 
of God disappears. It is therefore in nature and the soul that he 
must be sought and found. 

The universe, which comprises nature and man, manifests God. 
Is this saying that it exhausts God ? By no means. Let us 
always consult psychology. I know myself only by my acts ; 
that is certain ; and what is no,t less certain is, that all my acts 
do not exhaust, do not equal my power and my substance ; for 
my power, at least that of my will, can always add an act to all 
those which it has already produced, and it has the conscious- 
ness, at the same time that it is exercised, of containing in itself 
something to be exercised still. Of God and the world must be 
said two things in appearance contrary, — we know God only by 
the world, and God is essentially distinct and different from the 
world. The first cause, like all secondary causes, manifests itself 
only by its effects ; it can even be conceived only by them, and it 
surpasses them by all of the difference between the Creator and 
the created, the perfect and the imperfect. The world is indefi- 
nite ; it is not infinite ; for, whatever may be its quantity, 
thought can always add to it. To the myriads of worlds that 
compose the totality of the world, may be added new worlds. 
But God is infinite, absolutely infinite in his essence, and an in- 
definite series cannot equal the infinite ; for the indefinite is 
nothing else than the finite more or less multiplied and capable 
of continuous multiplication. The world is a whole which has 
its harmony ; for a God could make only a complete and har- 
monious work. The harmony of the world corresponds to the 
unity of God, as indefinite quantity is a defective sign of the in- 
finity of God. To say that the world is God, is to admit only 
the world and deny God. Give to this whatever name you 
please, it is at bottom atheism. On the one hand, to Buppose 
that the world is void of God, and that God is separate from the 
world, is an insupportable and almost impossible abstraction. 



366 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

To distinguish is not to separate. I distinguish myself, but do 
not separate myself from my qualities and my acts. So God is 
not the world, although he is in it everywhere present in spirit 
and in truth. 1 



1 We place here this analogous passage on the true measure in which it 
may be said that God is at once comprehensible and incomprehensible, 1st 
Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, p. 12 : " We say in the first place that God is 
not absolutely incomprehensible, for this manifest reason, that, being the 
cause of tins universe, he passes into it, and is reflected in it, as the cause in 
the effect ; therefore we recognize him. ' The heavens declare his glory,' 
and ' the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly 
seen, being understood by the things that are made ;' his power, in the 
thousands of worlds sown in the boundless regions of space ; his intelligence 
in their harmonious laws ; finally, that which there is in him most august, 
in the sentiments of virtue, of holiness, and of love, which the heart of man 
contains. It must be that God is not incomprehensible to us, for all nations 
have petitioned him, since the first day of the intellectual life of humanity. 
God, then, as the cause of the universe, reveals himself to us ; but God is 
not only the cause of the universe, he is also the perfect and infinite cause, 
possessing in himself, not a relative perfection, which is only a degree of im- 
perfection, but an absolute perfection, an infinity which is not only the finite 
multiplied by itself in those proportions which the human mind is able 
always to enumerate, but a true infinity, that is, the absolute negation of all 
limits, in all the powers of his being. Moreover, it is not true that an indefi- 
nite effect adequately expresses an infinite cause ; hence it is not true that 
we are able absolutely to comprehend God by the world and by man, for all 
of God is not in them. In order absolutely to comprehend the infinite, it is 
necessary to have an infinite power of comprehension, and that is not granted 
to us. God, in manifesting himself, retains something in himself which 
nothing finite can absolutely manifest ; consequently, it is not permitted us 
to comprehend absolutely. There remains, then, in God, beyond the uni- 
verse and man, something unknown, impenetrable, incomprehensible. 
Hence in the immeasurable spaces of the universe, and beneath all the pro- 
fundities of the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, 
whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new mani- 
festations. God is to us, therefore, incomprehensible ; but even of this in- 
comprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea ; for we have the most 
precise idea of infinity. And this idea is not in us a metaphysical refine- 
ment, it is a simple and primitive conception which enlightens us from our 
entrance into this world, both luminous and obscure, explaining every thing, 
and being explained by nothing, because it carries us at first to the summit 
and the limit of all explanation. There is something inexplicable for 
thought, — behold then whither thought tends; there is infinite being, — 
behold then the necessary principle of all relative and finite beings. Keason 
explains not the inexplicable, it conceives it. It is not able to comprehend 
infinity in an absolute manner, but it comprehends it in some degree in its 



• RESUME OF DOCTRINE. 367 

Such is our theodicea : it rejects the excesses of all systems? 
and contains, we believe at least, all that is good in them. From 
sentiment it borrows a personal God as we ourselves are a per- 
son, and from reason a necessary, eternal, infinite God. In the 
presence of two opposite systems, — one of which, in order to see 
and feel God in the world, absorbs him in it ; the other of which, 
in order not to confound God with the world, separates him from 
it and relegates him to an inaccessible solitude, — it gives to both 
just satisfaction by offering to them a God who is in fact in the 
world, since the world is his work, but without his essence being 
exhausted in it, a God who is both absolute unity and unity mul- 
tiplied, infinite and living, immutable and the principle of move- 
ment, supreme intelligence and supreme truth, sovereign justice 
and sovereign goodness, before whom the world and man are 
like nonentity, who, nevertheless, is pleased with the world and 
man, substance eternal, and cause inexhaustible, impenetrable, 
and everywhere perceptible, who must by turns be sought in 
truth, admired in beauty, imitated, even at an infinite distance, 
in goodness and justice, venerated and loved, continually studied 
with an indefatigable zeal, and in silence adored. 

Let us sum up this resume. Setting out from the observation 
of ourselves in order to preserve ourselves from hypothesis, we 
have found in consciousness three orders of facts. We have left 
to each of them its character, its rank, its bearing, and its limits. 
Sensation has appeared to us the indispensable coudition, but not 



indefinite manifestations, which reveal it, and which veil it ; and, further, 
as it has been said, it comprehends it so far as incomprehensible. It is, 
therefore, an equal error to call God absolutely comprehensible, and abso- 
lutely incomprehensible. He is both invisible and present, revealed and 
withdrawn in himself, in the world and out of the world, so familiar and in- 
timate with his creatures, that we see him by opening our eyes, that we feel 
him in feeling our hearts beat, and at the same time inaccessible in his im- 
penetrable majesty, mingled with every thing, and separated from every 
thing, manifesting himself in universal life, and causing scarcely an ephem- 
eral shadow of his eternal essence to appear there, communicating himself 
without cessation, and remaining incommunicable, at once the living God, 
and the God concealed, i Deus vivus et Deus obsconditusS " 



368 LECTURE SEVENTEENTH. 

the foundation of knowledge. Reason is the faculty itself of 
knowing ; it has furnished us with absolute principles, and these 
absolute principles have conducted us to absolute truths. Senti- 
ment, which pertains at once to sensation and reason, has found 
a place between both. Setting out from consciousness, but 
always guided by it, we have penetrated into the region of being ; 
we-have gone quite naturally from knowledge to its objects by 
the road that the human race pursues, that Kant sought in vain, 
or rather misconceived at pleasure, to wit, that reason which 
must be admitted, entire or rejected entire, which reveals to us 
existences as well as truths. Therefore, after having recalled all 
the great metaphysical, resthetical, and moral truths, we have re- 
ferred them to their principle ; with the human race we have 
pronounced the name of God, who explains all things, because he 
has made all things, whom all our faculties require, — reason, the 
heart, the senses, since he is the author of all our faculties. 

This doctrine is so simple, is to such an extent in all our 
powers, is so conformed to all our instincts, that it scarcely ap- 
pears a philosophic doctrine, and, at the same time, if you ex- 
amine, it more closely, if you compare it with all celebrated doc- 
trines, you will find that it is related to them and differs from 
them, that it is none of them and embraces them all, that it ex- 
presses precisely the side of them that has made them live and 
sustains them in history. But that is only the scientific character 
of the doctrine which w T e present to you ; it has still another char- 
acter which distinguishes it and recommends it to you much 
more.- The spirit that animates it is that which of old inspired 
Socrates, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, which makes your hearts 
beat when you are reading Corneille and Bossuet, which dictated 
to Vauvenargues the few pages that have immortalized his name, 
which you feel 'especially in Reid, sustained by an admirable good 
sense, and even in Kant, in the midst of, and superior to the em- 
barrassments of his metaphysics, to wit, the taste of the beautiful 
and the good in all things, the passionate love of honesty, the 
ardent desire of the moral grandeur of humanity. Yes, wo do 



KESTJME OF DOCTRINE. 369 

not fear to repeat that we tend thither by all our views ; it is the 
end to which are related all the parts of our instruction ; it is the 
thought which serves as their connection, and is, thus to speak, 
their soul. May this thought be always present to you, and ac- 
company you as a faithful and generous friend, wherever fortune 
shall lead you, under the tent of the soldier, in the office of the 
lawyer, of the physician, of the savant, in the study of the literary 
man, as well as in the studio of the artist ! Finally, may it 
sometimes remind you of him who has been to you its very sin- 
cere but too feeble interpreter ! 

16* 



APPENDIX. 



Page 188: "What a destiny was that of Eustache Lesueur!" 
It is perceived that we have followed, as regards his death, the tra- 
dition, or rather the prejudices current at the present day, and which 
have misled the "best judges before us. But there have appeared in a 
recent and interesting publication, called Archives de V Art frangais, 
vol. hi., certain incontrovertible documents, never before published, 
on the life and works of the painter of St. Bruno, which compel us 
to withdraw certain assertions agreeable to general opinion, but con- 
trary to truth. The notice of Lesueur's death, extracted for the first 
time from the Register of Deaths of the parish church of Saint-Louis 
in the isle of JSFotre-Dame, preserved amongst the archives of the 
Hotel de Yille at Paris, clearly prove that he did not die at the Char- 
treux, but in the isle of Notre-Darne, where he dwelt, in the parish 
of St. Louis, and that he was buried in the church of Saint-Etienne 
du Mont, the resting-place of Pascal and Racine. It appears also that 
Lesueur died before his wife, Genevieve Gousse, since the Eegister of 
Births of the parish of Saint-Louis, contains under the date 18th 
February, 1655, a notice of the baptism of a fourth child of Lesueur. 
Now, Genevieve Gousse must have deceased almost immediately 
after her confinement, supposing her to have died before her hus- 
band's decease, which occurred on the 1st of the following May. If 
this were the case, we should have found a notice of her death in the 
Register of Deaths for the year 1655, as we do that of her husband. 
Such a notice, however, which could alone disprove the probability, 
and authenticate the vulgar opinion, is nowhere to be found amongst 
the archives of the Hotel de Yille, at least the author of the N'ouvelles 
Recherches has nowhere been able to meet with it. 



372 APPENDIX. 

In the other particulars our rapid sketch of Lesueur's history re- 
mains untouched. He never was in Italy; and according to the 
account of Guillet de Saint-Georges, which has so long remained in 
manuscript, he never desired to go there. He was poor, discreet, 
and pious, tenderly loved his wife, and lived in the closest union with 
his three brothers and brother-in-law, who were all pupils and fellow- 
laborers of his. It appears to be a refinement of criticism which de- 
nies the current belief of an acquaintance between Lesueur and Pous- 
sin. If no document authenticates it, at all events it is not contra- 
dicted by any, and appears to us to be highly probable. 

Every one admits that Lesueur studied and admired Poussin. It 
would certainly be strange if he did not seek his acquaintance, which 
he could have obtained without difficulty, since Poussin was staying 
at Paris from 1640 to 1642. It would be difficult for them not to 
have met. After Youet's death in 1641, Lesueur acquired more and 
more a peculiar style ; and in 1642, at the age of twenty-five, entirely 
unshackled, and with a taste ripe for the antique and Kaphael, he 
must frequently have been at the Louvre, where Poussin resided. 
Thus it is natural to suppose that they frequently saw each other and 
became acquainted, and with their sympathies of character and tal- 
ent, acquaintance must have resulted in esteem and love. If Pous- 
sin's letters do not mention Lesueur, we would remark that neither do 
they mention Champagne, whose connection with Poussin is not dis- 
puted. The argument built on the silence of Guillet de Saint- Georges 1 
account is far from convincing ; inasmuch as being intended to bo 
read before a Sitting of the Academy, it could only contain a notice 
of the great artist's career, without those biographical details in which 
his friendships would be mentioned. Lastly, it is impossible to deny 
Poussin's influence upon Lesueur, which it seems to us at least prob- 
able was as much due to his counsels as to his example. 

Page 190: u But the marvel of the picture is the figure of St. 
Paul." 

We have recently seen, at Hampton Court, the seven cartoons of 
Kaphael, which should not be looked at, still less criticised, but on 
bended knee. Behold Raphael arrived at the summit of his art, and 
in the last years of life ! And these were but drawings for tapes- 
try ! These drawings alone would reward the journey to England, 
even were the figures from the friezes of the Parthenon not at the 
British Museum. One never tires of contemplating these grand per- 



APPENDIX. 373 

formances even in the obscurity of that ill-lighted room. Nothing 
could be more noble, more magnificent, more imposing, more majes- 
tic. "What draperies, what attitudes, what forms ! Notwithstanding 
the absence of color, the effect is immense ; the mind is struck, at 
once charmed and transported ; but the soul, we can speak for our- 
selves, remains well-nigh insensible. We request any one to compare 
carefully the sixth cartoon, clearly one of the finest, representing the 
Preaching of St. Paul at Ephesus, with the painting we have de- 
scribed of Lesueur's. One, immediately and at the first sight, trans- 
ports you into the regions of the ideal ; the other is less striking at 
first, but stay, consider it well, study it in detail, then take in the 
whole : by degrees you are overcome by an ever-increasing emotion. 
Above all, examine in both the principal character, St. Paul. Here, 
you behold the fine long folds of a superb robe which at once envel- 
ops and sets off his height, whilst the figure is in shade, and the little 
you see of it has nothing striking. There he confronts you, inspired, 
terrible, majestic. ISTow say which side lays claim to moral effect. 

Page 193: "The great works of Lesueur, Poussin, and so many 
others scattered over Europe." 

Of all the paintings of Lesueur which are in England, that which 
we regret most not having seen is Alexander and his Physician, 
painted for M. de Nouveau, director-general of the Posies, which 
passed from the Hotel ISTouveau to the Place Royale in the Orleans 
Gallery, from thence into England, where it was bought by Lady 
Lucas at the great London sale in 1800. The sale catalogue, with 
the prices and names of the purchasers, will be found at the end of 
vol. i. of M. "Waagen's excellent work, (Euvres d'Art et Artistes en 
Angleterre, 2 vols., Berlin, 1837 and 1838. 

We were both consoled and agreeably surprised on our return, to 
meet, in the valuable gallery of M. le Comte d'Houdetot, an ancient 
peer of France, and free member of the Academy of Fine Arts, with 
another Alexander and his physician Philip, in which the hand of 
Lesueur cannot be mistaken. The composition of the entire piece is 
perfect. The drawing is exquisite. The amplitude and nobleness of 
the draperies recall those of Raphael. The form of Alexander fine 
and languid ; the person of Philip the physician grave and imposing. 
The coloring, though not powerful, is finely blended in tone. Now, 
where is the true original, is it with M. Houdetot or in England ? 
The painting sold in London in 1800 certainly came from the Orleans' 



374: APPENDIX. 

gallery, which would seem most likely to have possessed the original. 
On the other hand, it is impossible M. Houdetot's picture is a copy. 
They must, therefore, both be equally the work of Lesueur, who has 
in this instance treated the same subject twice over, as he has like- 
wise done the Preaching of St. Paul; of which there is another, 
smaller than that at the Louvre, but equally admirable, at the Place 
Eoyale, belonging to M. Girou de Buzariengues, corresponding mem- 
ber of the Academy of Sciences. 1 

We borrow M. Waagen's description of the works of Lesueur, found 
by that eminent critic in the English collections: The Queen of 
Sheba before Solomon, the property of the Duke of Devonshire, vol. 
i., p. 245. Christ at the foot of the Cross supported by his Family, 
belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury, vol. ii., p. 463, " the sentiment 
deep and truthful," remarks M. "Waagen. The Magdalen pouring 
the ointment on the feet of Jesus, the property of Lord Exeter, vol. 
ii., p. 485, u a picture full of the purest sentiment;" lastly, in the 
possession of M. Miles, a Death of Germanicus, " a rich and noble 
composition, completely in Poussin's style," remarks M. Waagen, 
vol. ii., p. 356. Let us add that this last work is not met within any 
catalogue, ancient or modern. We ask ourselves whether this may 
not be a copy of the Germanicus of Poussin attributed to Lesueur. 

The author of Musees dlAllemange et du Russie (Paris, 1844) men- 
tions at Berlin a Saint Bruno adoring the Cross in his Cell, opening 
upon a landscape, and pretends that this picture is as pathetic as the 
best Saint Brunos in the Museum at Paris. It is probably a sketch, 
like the one we have, or one of the wanting panels ; for as for the 
pictures themselves, there were never more than twenty-two at the 
Chartreux, and these are at the Louvre. Perhaps, however, it may 
be the picture which Lesueur made for M. Bernard de Roze, see Flo- 
rent Lecomte, vol. hi., p. 98, which represented a Carthusian in a 
cell. At St. Petersburg, the catalogue of the Hermitage mentions 
seven pictures of Lesueur, one of which, The infant Moses exposed on 
the Nile, is admitted by the author cited to be authentic. Can this 
be one of two Moses which were painted by Lesueur for M. de Nou- 
veau, as we learn from Guillet de Saint-Georges ? Unless M. Viardot 
is deceived, and mistakes a copy for an original, we must regret that 



1 This is the sketch which Felibien so justly praises, part v., p. 37, of the 
1st edition, in 4to. 



LESUEUR. 



375 



a real Lesueur should have been suffered to stray to St. Petersburg, 
with many of Poussin's most beautiful Claudes (see p. 474), Mignards, 
Sebastian Bourdons, Gaspars, Stellas, and Valentins. 

Some years ago, at the sale of Cardinal Fesch's gallery, we might 
have acquired one of Lesueur's finest pieces, executed for the church 
of Saint- Germain-l'Auxerrois, which had got, by some chance, into 
the possession of Chancellor Pontchartrain, afterwards into that of 
the Emperor's uncle. This celebrated picture, Christ with Martha 
and Mary, formed at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, a pendent to the 
Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. Will it be believed that the French 
Government lost the opportunity, and permitted this little chef- 
d'oeuvre to pass into the hands of the King of Bavaria ? A good copy 
at Marseilles was thought, doubtless, sufficient, and the original was 
left to find its way to the gallery at Munich, and meet again the St. 
Louis on his Tcnees at Mass, which the catalogue of that gallery attrib- 
utes to Lesueur, on what ground we are not aware. In conclusion, 
we may mention that there is in the Museum at Brussels, a charming 
little Lesueur, The Saviour giving his Blessing, and in the Museums 
of Grenoble and Montpelier several fragments of the History of 
Tooias, painted for M. de Fieubet. 

Page 193 : " Those master-pieces of art that honor the nation de- 
part without authorization from the national territory ! There has 
not been found a government which has undertaken at least to repur- 
chase those that we have lost, to get back again the great works of 
Poussin, Lesueur, and so many others, scattered in Europe, instead 
of squandering millions to acquire the baboons of Holland, as Louis 
XIV. said, or Spanish canvases, in truth of an admirable color, but 
without nobleness and moral expression." 

Sfrall we give a recent instance of the small value we appear to set 
cm Poussin ? We blush to think that in 1848 we should have permit- 
ted the noble collection of M. de Montcalm to pass into England. 
One picture escaped : it was put up to sale in Paris on the 5th of 
March, 1850. It was a charming Poussin, undoubtedly authentic, 
from the Orleans gallery, and described at length in the catalogue of 
Dubois de Saint-Gelais. It represented the Birth of Bacchus, and 
by its variety of scenes and multitude of ideas, showed it belonged to 
Poussin's best period. We must do Normandy, rather the city of 
Eouen, the justice to say, that it made an effort to acquire it, but 
it was unsupported by Government ; and this composition, wholly 



376 APPENDIX. 

French, was sold at Paris for the sum of 17,000 francs, to a foreigner, 
Mr. Hope. 

Miserable contrast ! while five or six hundred thousand francs have 
been given for a Virgin by Murillo, which is now turning the heads 
of all who behold it. I confess that mine has entirely resisted. I 
admire the freshness, the sweetness, the harmony of color ; but every 
other superior quality which one looks to find in such a subject is 
wanting, or at least escaped me. Ecstasy never transfigured that 
face, which is neither noble nor great. The lovely infant before me 
does not seem sensible of the profound mystery accomplished in her. 
What, then, can there be in this vaunted Virgin which so catches the 
multitude ? She is supported by beautiful angels, in a fine dress, of 
a charming color, the effect of all which is doubtless highly pleasant- 
Page 195 : " We endeavor to console ourselves for having lost the 
Seven Sacraments, and for not having known how to keep from Eng- 
land and Germany so many productions of Poussin, now buried in 
foreign collections," etc. 

After having expressed our regret that we were unacquainted with 
the Seven Sacraments save from the engravings of Pesne, we made 
a journey to London, to see with our own eyes, and judge for our- 
selves these famous pictures, with many others of our great country- 
man, now fallen into the possession of England, through our culpable 
indifference, and which have been brought under our notice by M. 
Waagen. 

In the few days we were able to dedicate to this little journey, we 
had to examine four galleries : the National Gallery, answering to 
our Museum, those of Lord Ellesmere and the Marquis of West- 
minster, and, at some miles from London, the collection at Dulwich 
College, celebrated in England, though but little known on the 
continent. 

We likewise visited another collection, resulting from an institution 
which might ea.sily be introduced into France, to the decided advan- 
tage of art and taste. A society has been formed in England, called 
the British Institution for promoting the Fine Arts in the United 
Kingdom. Every year it has, in London, an exhibition of ancient 
paintings, to which individual galleries send their choice pieces, so 
that in a certain number of years all the most remarkable pictures in 
England pass under the public eye. But for this exhibition, what 
riches would remain buried in the mansions of the aristocracy or un- 



POUSSIN". 6 < » 

known cabinets of provincial amateurs ! The society, having at its 
head the greatest names of England, enjoys a certain authority, and 
all ranks respond eagerly to its appeal. 

We ourselves saw the list of persons who this year contributed to 
the exhibition; there were her Majesty the Queen, the Dukes of 
Bedford, Devonshire, Newcastle, Northumberland, Sutherland, the 
Earls of Derby and Suffolk, and numerous other great men, besides 
bankers, merchants, savants, and artists. The exhibition is public, 
but not free, as you must pay both for admission and the printed 
catalogue. The money thus acquired is appropriated to defray 
the expenses of the exhibition ; whatever remains is employed in 
the purchase of pictures, which are then presented to the National 
Gallery. 

At this year's exhibition we saw three of Claude Lorrain's, which 
well sustained the name of that master. Apollo icatching the herds 
of Admehis ; a Sea-port, both belonging to the Earl of Leicester, and 
Psyche and Amor, the property of Mr. Perkins ; a pretended Lesueur, 
the Death of the Virgin, from the Earl of Suffolk; seven Sebastian 
Bourdons, the Seven WorTcs of Mercy, 1 lent by the Earl of Yarbor- 
ough ; a landscape by Gaspar Poussin, but not one morceau of his 
illustrious brother-in-law's. 

We were more fortunate in the National Gallery. 

There, to begin, what admirable Claudes ! "We counted as many 
as ten, some of them of the highest value. We will confine ourselves 
to the recapitulation of three, the Embarkation of St. Ursula, a large 
landscape, and the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba. 

1st. The Embarkation of St. Ursula, which was painted for the 
Barberini, and adorned their palace at Borne until the year 1760, 
when an English amateur purchased it from the Princess Barberini, 
with other works of the first class. This picture is 3 feet 8 inches 
high, 4 feet 11 inches wide. 

2d. The large landscape is 4 feet 11 inches high, 6 feet 7 inches 



1 This great work has been long in England, as remarked by Mariette, see 
the Abecedario, just published, article S. Bourdon, vol. i., p. 171. It appears 
to have been a favorite work of Bourdon, he having himself engraved it, see 
de Piles, Abrege de la Vie des Peintres, 2d edition, p. 494, and the Peintre 
graveur frangais, of M. Kobert Dumesnil, vol. i., p. 181, etc. The copper- 
plates of the Seven Works of Mercy are at the Louvre. 



378 APPENDIX. 

wide. Rebecca is seen, with her relatives and servants, waiting the 
arrival of Isaac, who comes from afar to celebrate their marriage. 

3d. The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, going to visit Solo- 
mon, formed a pendent to 'the preceding figure, which it resembles 
in its dimensions. It is both a sea and landscape drawing. M. 
"Waagen declares it to be the most beautiful morceau of the kind he 
is acquainted with, and asserts that Lorrain has here attained per- 
fection, vol. i., p. 211. This masterpiece was executed by Claude 
for his protector, the Duke de Bouillon. It is signed " Claude GE. 
I. V., faict pour son Altesse le Due de Bouillon, anno 1648." Doubt- 
less the great Duke de Bouillon, eldest brother of Turenne. This 
French work, destined, too, for France, she has now forever lost, as 
well as the famous Book of Truth, Libro di Verita, in which Claude 
collected the drawings of all his paintings, drawings which may be 
themselves regarded as finished pictures. This invaluable treasure 
was, like the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, for a long time in 
the hands of a French broker, who would willingly have relinquished 
it to the Government, but failing to find purchasers in Paris in the 
last century, ultimately so]d it for a mere nothing into Holland, 
whence it has passed into England. 1 The author of the Musees W Al- 
lemagne et de Russie, mentions that in the gallery of the Hermitage 
at St. Petersburg, amongst a large number of Claudes, whose authen- 
ticity he appears to admit, there are four morceaux, which he does 
not hesitate to declare equal to the most celebrated chefs-d'oeuvre of 
that master, in Paris or London, called the Morning, the Noon, the 
Evening, and the Night. They are from Malmaison. Thus the sale 
of the gallery of an empress has in our own time enriched Russia, as, 
twenty-five years before, the sale of the Orleans gallery enriched 
England. 

In the National Gallery, along with the serene and quiet landscapes 
of Lorrain, are five of Gaspar's, depicting nature under an opposite 
aspect — rugged and wild localities, and tempests. One of the must 
remarkable represents Eneas and Dido seeking shelter in a grotto 
from the violence of a storm. The figures are from the pencil of 
Albano, and for a length of time remained in the palace Falconieri. 



1 The Libro di Verita is now the property of the Duke of Devonshire. M. 
L6on de Laborde has given a detailed account of it in the Archives de VArt 
frangais, torn, i., p. 435, et soq. 



poussin. 379 

Two other landscapes are from the palace Corsini, and two from the 
palace Colonna. 

But to return to our real subject, which is Poussin. There are 
eight paintings by his hand in the National Gallery, all worthy of 
mention. M. TVaagen has merely spoken of them in general terms, 
but we shall proceed to give a description in detail. 

Of these eight paintings, only one, representing the plague of Ash- 
dod, is taken from sacred history. This is described in the printed 
catalogue as No. 165. The Israelites having been vanquished by the 
Philistines, the ark was taken by the victors and placed in the temple 
of Dagon at Ashdod. The idol falls before the ark, and the Philis- 
tines are smitten with the pestilence. This canvas is 4 feet 3 inches 
high, and 6 feet 8 inches wide. A sketch or copy of the Plague of 
the Philistines is in the Museum of the Louvre, and has been en- 
graved by Heard. Poussin was, in fact, fond of repeating a subject ; 
there are two sets of the Seven Sacraments, two Arcadias, 1 two or 
three Moses striking the Bod; &c. The science of painting is here 
employed to portray the scene in all its terrors, and display every 
horror of the pestilence, and it would seem that Poussin had here 
endeavored to contend with Michael Angelo, even at the expense of 
beauty. It is said the commission for this work was given by Cardi- 
nal Barberini. It comes from the palace of Colonna. The subjects 
of the remaining seven pictures in the National Gallery are mytho- 
logical, and may be nearly all referred to the early epoch of Poussin's 
career, when he paid tribute to the genius of the 16th century, and 
yielded to the influence of Marini. 

No. 39. The Education of Bacchus, a subject chosen by Poussin 
more than once. On a small canvas 2 feet 3 inches high, and 3 feet 
1 inch wide. 

No. -40. Another small picture 1 foot 6 inches high, and 3 feet 4 
inches broad: Phocion washing his Feet at a Public Fountain, a 
touching emblem of the purity and simplicity of his life. To heighten 
this rustic scene, and impart its meaning, the painter shows us the 
trophies of the noble warrior hung on the trunk of a tree at a little 
distance. The whole composition is striking and full of animation. 



1 The first composition of Arcadia, truly precious could it have boon 
placed in the Louvre beside the second and better production, is in Eng- 
land, the property of the Duke of Devonshire. 



380 APPENDIX. 

"We believe that it has never been engraved. It form3 a happy addi- 
tion to the two other compositions consecrated by Poussin to Pho- 
cion, and which have been so admirably engraved by Baudet, Pliocion 
carried out of the City of Athens, and the Tomb of Phocion. 

No. 42. Here is one of the three bacchanals painted by Poussin for 
the Duke de Montmorency. The two others are said to be in the 
collection of Lord Ashburnham. This bacchanal is 4 feet 8 inches 
high, and 3 feet 1 inch wide. In a warm landscape Bacchus is 
sleeping surrounded, by nymphs, satyrs, and centaurs, whilst Silenus 
appears under an arbor attended by sylvan figures. 

No. 62. Another bacchanal, which may be considered one of Pous- 
sin's masterpieces. According to M. "Waagen, it belonged to the 
Colonna collection, but the catalogue, published by authority, states 
that it was originally the property of the Comte de Vaudreueili, that 
it afterwards came into the hands of M. de Calonne, whence it passed 
into England, and ultimately found its way into the hands of Mr. 
Hamlet, from whom it was purchased by Parliament, and placed in 
the National Gallery. It is 3 feet 8 inches high, and 4 feet 8 inches 
wide. Its subject is a dance of fauns and bacchantes, which is in- 
terrupted by a satyr, who attempts to take liberties with a nymph. 
Besides the main subject, there are numerous spirited and graceful 
episodes, particularly two infants endeavoring to catch in a cup the 
juice of a bunch of grapes supported in air, and pressed by a bac- 
chante of slim and fine form. The composition is full of fire, energy, 
and spirit. There is not a single group, not a figure, which will not 
repay an attentive study. M. Waagen does not hesitate to pronounce 
it one of Poussin's finest. He admires the truth and variety of heads, 
the freshness of color, and the transparent tone (die Fdrbung von sel- 
tenster Frische, Helle und Klarheit in alien Theilen). It has been 
engraved by Iluart, and accurately copied by Landon, under the 
title of Danse de Fauns et de Bacchantes. 

No. 05. Cephalus and Aurora. Aurora, captivated by the beauty 
of Cephalus, endeavors to separate him from his wife Procris. Being 
unsuccessful, in a fit of jealousy she gives to Cephalus the dart which 
causes the death of his adored spouse. 3 feet 2 inches high, 4 feet 
2 inches wide. 

No. 83. A large painting, 5 feet 6 inches high, and 8 feet wide, 
representing Phineae and his Companions changed into Stones by 
■looking on the Gorgon. Perseus, having rescued Andromeda from 



poussin. 381 

the sea monster, obtains her hand from her father Cepheus, who 
celebrates their nuptials with a magnificent feast. Phineas, to whom 
Andromeda had been betrothed, rushes in upon the festivity at the 
head of a troop of armed men. A combat ensues, in which Perseus, 
being nearly overcome, opposes to his enemies the head of Medusa, 
by which they are instantly changed to stone. This composition is 
full of vigor, with brilliant coloring, although somewhat crude. It 
is nowhere mentioned, and we are not aware of its having been en- 
graved. 

No. 91. A charming little drawing, 2 feet 2 inches high, 1 foot 8 
inches wide : A sleeping Nymph, surprised by Loce and Satyrs, en- 
graved by Daulle, also in Landon's work. 

Passing from the National Gallery to that of Bridgewater, we come 
upon another phase of Poussin's genius, and encounter not the disci- 
ple of Marini but the disciple of the gospel, the graces of mythology 
giving way to the austerity and sublimity of Christianity. Such is 
the account of what we came to see ; we looked for much, and found 
more than w T e expected. 

The Bridgewater Gallery is so named after its founder, the Duke 
of Bridgewater, by whom it was formed about the middle of the 
eighteenth century. He bequeathed it to his brother, the Marquis of 
Stafford, on the condition of his leaving it to his second son, Lord 
Francis Egerton, now Lord Ellesmere. The best part of this collec- 
tion was engraved during the life of the Marquis of Stafford, by 
Ottley, under the title of the Stafford Gallery, in 4 vols, folio. 

It occupies the first place in England amongst private collections, 
on account of the number of masterpieces of the Italian, and Dutch, 
and French schools. A large number of paintings were added to it 
from the Orleans Gallery, and we could not repress a feeling of regret 
to meet at Cleveland Square with so many masterpieces formerly be- 
longing to France, and which have been engraved in the two cele- 
brated works: 1. La Galerie du due W Orleans au Palais-Royal, 2 
volumes in folio ; 2. Recueil d'estampes d'apres les plus beaux tableaux 
et dessins qui sont en France dans le cabinet du roi et celwi de Mon- 
seigneur le due d 1 Orleans, 1729, 2 volumes in folio; a most valuable 
collection known also under the name of the Cabinet of Crozat. 
This admirable collection is deposited in a building worthy of it, in a 
veritable palace, and consists of nearly 300 paintings. The French 
school is here well represented. The Musical Party, from the 



382 APPENDIX. 

Orleans Gallery, and engraved in the Galerie du Palais- Roy al ; 
three Bourguignons, four Gaspars, four fine Claudes, described by 
M. Waagen, vol. i., p. 331, the two former described in the catalogue 
as Nos. 11 and 41 were painted in 1664 for M. de Bourlemont, a 
gentleman of Lorraine; the former, Demosthenes by the Sea-side, 
offers a fine contrast between majestic ruins and nature eternally 
young and fresh ; the second, Moses at the Burning Bush, a third, 
No. 103, of the year 1657, was likewise painted for a Frenchman, M. 
de Lagarde, and represents the Metamorphosis of Apuleius into a 
Shepherd ; lastly, there is a fourth, No. 97, the freshest idyll that 
ever was, a View of the Cascatelles of Tivoli. 

The memory of these charming compositions, however, soon fades 
before the view of the eight grand pictures of Poussin, marked in the 
catalogue Nos. 62-69, the Seven Sacraments, and Moses striking the 
Rock with his Rod. 

It would be difficult to describe the religious sensations which took 
possession of us whilst contemplating the Seven Sacraments. "What- 
ever M. Waagen may please to assert, there is certainly nothing the- 
atrical about them. The beauty of ancient statuary is here animated 
and enlivened by the spirit of Christianity, and the genius of the 
painter. The moral expression is of the most exalted character, and 
is left to be noticed less in the details than in the general composition. 
In fact, it is in composition that Poussin excels, and, in this respect, 
we do not think he has any superior, not even of the Florentine and 
Roman school. As each Sacrament is a vast scene in which the 
smallest details go to enhance the effect of the whole, so the Seven 
Sacraments form a harmonious entirety, a single work, representing 
the development of the Christian life by means of its most august 
ceremonies, in the same way as the twenty-two St. Brunos of Lesueur 
express the whole monastic life, the intention of the variety being to 
give a truer conception of its unity. Can any one, in sincerity, say 
as much as this for the Stanze of the Vatican ? Have they a com- 
mon sentiment? Is the sentiment profound, and, indeed, Christian? 
No doubt Raphael elevates the soul, whatever is beautiful cannot fail 
to do that ; but he touches only the surface, circum prcucordia ludit ; 
he penetrates not deep; moves not the inner fibres of our being: for 
why ? he himself was not so moved. lie snatches us from earth, and 
transports us into the serene atmosphere of eternal beauty; but the 
mournful side of life, the sublime emotions of the heart, magnanimity, 



poussin. 383 

heroism, in a word, moral grandeur, this he does not express ; and 
why was this ? because he did not possess it in himself, because it 
was not to be met with around him in the Italy of the 1 6th century, 
in a society semi-pagan, superstitious, and impious, given up to every 
vice and disorder, which Luther could not even catch a glimpse of 
without raging with horror, and meditating a revolution. From this 
corrupt basis, thinly hidden by a fictitious politeness, two great fig- 
ures, Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna, show themselves. But 
the noble widow of the Marquis of Pescaria was not of the company 
of the Fornarina ; and what common ground could the chaste lover 
of the second Beatrice, the Dante of painting and of sculpture, the 
intrepid engineer who defended Florence, the melancholy author of 
tlie Last Judgment and of Lorenzo di Medici, have with such men as 
Perugino boldly professing atheism, at the same time that he painted, 
at the highest price possible, the most delicate Madonnas ; and his 
worthy friend Aretino, atheist, and moreover hypocrite, writing with 
the same hand his infamous sonnets and the life of the Holy Virgin; 
and Giulio Romano, who lent his pencil to the wildest debaucheries, 
and Marc' Antonio, who engraved them ? Such is the world in 
which Raphael lived, and which early taught him to worship mate- 
rial beauty, the purest taste in design, if not the strongest, fine draw- 
ing, sweet contours, of light, of color, but which always hides from 
him the highest beauty, that is, moral beauty. Poussin belongs to a 
very different world. Thanks to God, he had learned to know in 
France others besides artists without faith or morals, elegant ama- 
teurs, rich prelates, and compliant beauties. He had seen with his 
eyes heroes, saints, and statesmen. He must have met, at the court 
of Louis XIII. , between 1640 and 1642, the young Conde and the 
young Turenne, St. Vincent de Paul, Mademoiselle de Vigeau, and 
Mademoiselle de Lafayette ; had shaken hands with Richelieu, with 
Lesueur, with Champagne, and no doubt also with Corneille. Like 
the last, he is grave and masculine ; he has the sentiment of the 
great, and strives to reach it. If, above every thing, he is an artist, 
if his long career is an assiduous and indefatigable study of beauty, 
it is pre-eminently moral beauty that strikes him: and when he 
represents historic or Christian scenes, one feels he is there, like the 
author of the Cid, of Cinna, and of Polyeucte, in his natural element. 
He shows, assuredly, much spirit and grace in his mythologies, and 
like Corneille in several of his elegies and in the Declaration of Love 



384 APPENDIX. 

to Psyche : but also like him, it is in the thoughtful and noble style 
that Poussin excels : it is on the moral ground that he has a place 
exalted and apart in the history of art. 

It is not our intention to describe the Seven Sacraments, which has 
been done by others more competent to the task than ourselves. "We 
will only inquire whether Bossuet himself, in speaking of the sacra- 
ment of the Ordination, could have employed more gravity and 
majesty than Poussin has done in the noble painting, so well preserved, 
in the gallery of Lord Ellesmere. It is worthy of remark, in this as 
in the other paintings of Poussin's best period, how admirably the 
landscape accords with the historic portion. Whilst the foreground 
is occupied with the great scene in which Christ transmits his power 
to St. Peter before the assembled apostles, 1 in the distance, and above 
the heights, are descried edifices rising and in decay. Doubtless, 
the Extreme Unction is the most pathetic ; affects and attracts us 
most by its various qualities, particularly by a certain austere grace 
shed around the images of death; 2 but, unhappily, this striking 



1 In the first set of the Seven Sacraments, executed for the Chevalier del 
Pozzo, now in England, the property of the Duke of Eutland, and with which 
we are acquainted only through engravings, Christ is placed on the left hand ; 
it is less masterly and imposing, and the centre has a vacant appearance. 
In the second set, painted five or six years after the former for M. de Chante- 
loup, Christ is placed in the centre : this new disposition changes the entire 
effect of the piece. Poussin never repeated himself in treating the same sub- 
ject a second time, but improved on it, aiming ever at perfection. And the 
memorable answer which he once made to one who inquired of him by what 
means he had attained to so great perfection, " I never neglected anything," 
should be always present to the mind of every artist, painter, sculptor, poet, 
or composer. 

2 Poussin writes to M. de Chanteloup, April 25, 1644 (Lettres de Poussin, 
Paris, 1824), " I am working briskly at the Extreme Unction, which is indeed 
a subject worthy of Apelles, who was very fond of representing the dying." 
He adds, with a vivacity which seems to indicate that ho took a particular 
fancy to this painting, " I do not intend to quit it whilst I feel thus well- 
disposed, until I have put it in fair train for a sketch. It is to contain seven- 
teen figures of men, women, and children, young and old, one part of whom 
are drowned in tears, whilst the others pray for the dying. I will not de- 
scribe it to you more in detail. In this, my clumsy pen is quite unfit, it 
requires a gilded and well-set pencil. The principal figures are two feet 
high ; the painting will be about the size of your Manne, but of better pro- 
portion." Pelibien, a friend and confidant of Poussin, likewise remarks 
(Entretiens, etc., part iv., p. 293), that the Extreme Unction was one of the 
paintings which pleased him most. We learn at length, from Poussin's let- 



POUSSE*. 



385 



composition has almost totally disappeared under the black tint, 
winch ha- little by little gained on the other colors, and obscured 
the whole painting, so that we are well-nigh reduced to the engraving 
of Pesne. and tie beautiful drawing preserved in the museum of the 
Louvre. 1 

Most unhappily a technical error, into which even the most incon- 
siderable painter would not now fall, has deprived posterity of one half 
of Poussin s labors. He was in the habit of covering his canvas with 
a preparation of red. which has been changed by the effect of time 
into black, and thus absorbed the other colors, destroying the effect 
of the etherial perspective. As every one knows, this does not occur 
with a white preparation, which, instead of destroying the colors, 
preserves rhc^i for a length of time in their original state. This last 
process Poussin appears to have adopted in the Moses striking the 
Bad- with : incomparably the finest of all the Strivings of the 

Rock which proceeded from his pencil. This masterpiece is well 
known, from the engraving by Baudet, and has passed, with the 
Sacraments, from the Orleans gallery into the collection at 
Bridgewater. TThat unity is in this vast composition, and yet what 
variety in the action, the pose, the features of the figures ! It con- 
sists of twenty different pictures, and yet is but one ; and not even 
one of the episodes could be taken away without considerable injury 
to the ensemble of the piece. At the same time, what fine coloring! 
The impastation is both solid and light, and the colors are combined 
in the happiest manner, No doubt they might possess greater bril- 
liancy : but the severity of the subject agrees well with a moderate 
tone. It is important to remember this. In the first place, every 
subject demands its proper color : in the second, grave subjects re- 
quire a certain amount of coloring, which, however, must not be 



ters, that he finished it and sent it into France in this same year, 1644. 
in informs us that in 1646 he completed the Conjirmatiun, in 1647 the 
the Ordination and the M ad that he sent the 

last sacrament, that of Marriage^ at the commencement of the year 164S. 
Bellori le VU >, etc., Borne, 1 fS _ ives a full and detailed descrip- 

tion of the Extreme Unction : and, as he lived with Poussin, it seems credible 
that his explanations are for the most part those he had himself received 
from the great artist. 

1 The drawing of the Sdreme Unction is at the Louvre: the drawl. _- 
the five other sacraments are in the rich cabinet of M. de la Salle, that of the 
seventh is the property of the well-known print seller, If. Dcier. 

17 



386 APPENDIX. 

exceeded. Although the highest art does not consist in coloring, it 
would nevertheless be folly to regard it as of small importance : for, 
in that case, drawing would be every thing, and color might be alto- 
gether dispensed with. In attempting too far to please the eye, the 
risk is incurred of not going beyond and penetrating to the soul. On 
the other hand, want of color, or what is perhaps still worse, a dis- 
agreeable, crude, and improper coloring, while it offends the eye, like- 
wise impairs the moral effect, and deprives even beauty of its charm. 
Color is to painting what harmony is to poetry and prose. There is 
equal defect whether in the case of too much or too little harmony, 
while one same harmony continued must be looked upon as a serious 
fault. Is Corneille happily inspired ? His harmony, like his words, 
are true, beautiful, admirable in their variety. The tones differ with 
his different characters, but are always consistent with the conditions 
of harmony imposed by poesy. Is he negligent ? his style then be- 
comes rude, unpolished, at times intolerable. The harmony of Racine 
is slightly monotonous, his men talk like women, and his lyre has but 
one tone, that of a natural and refined elegance. There is but one 
man amongst us who speaks in every tone and in all languages, who 
has colors and accents for every subject, naive and sublime, vividly 
correct yet unaffectedly simple. Sweet as Racine in his lament of 
Madame, masculine and vigorous as Corneille or Tacitus when he 
comes to describe Retz or Cromwell, clear as the battle trumpet 
when his strain is Rocroy or Conde, suggestive of the equal and va- 
ried flow of a mighty river in the majestic harmony of his Discourse 
on Universal History, a History which, in the grandeur and extent 
of its composition, in its vanquished difficulties, its depth of art, 
where art even ceases to appear as such, in its perfect unity, and, at 
the same time, almost infinite variety of tone and style, is perhaps 
the most finished work which has ever come from the hand of man. 
To return to Poussin. At Hampton Court, where, by the side of 
the seven cartoons of Raphael, the nine magnificent Montegnas repre- 
senting the triumph of Caisar, and the fine portraits of Albert Durer 
and Holbein, French art makes' so small a figure, there is a Poussin' 
of particularly fine color, Satyrs finding a Nymph. The transpa- 
rent and lustrous body of the nymph forms the entire picture. It is 

1 There is hero likewise a charming Francis II., wholly from the hand of 
Clouet, and the portrait of Funelon by Rigaud, which may be the original or 
at all events is not inferior to the painting in the gallery at Vcrsailleb. 



poussin. 387 

a study of design and color, evidently of the period when Poussin, 
to perfect himself in every branch of his art, made copies from Titian. 

Time fails us to give the least idea of the rich gallery of the Mar- 
quess of Westminster, in Grosvenor-street. We refer for this to what 
M. Waagen has said, vol. ii., p. 113-130. The Flemish and Dutch 
schools preponderate in this gallery. One sees there in all their glory 
the three great masters of that school, Rubens, Van Dyck, and Rem- 
brandt, accompanied by a numerous suite of inferior masters, at 
present much in vogue, Hobbema, Cuyp, Both, Potter, and others, 
who, to our idea, fade completely before some half-dozen by Claude 
of all sizes, of every variety of subject, and nearly all of the best time 
of the great landscape-painter, between 1651 and 1661. Of these 
paintings, the greatest and most important is perhaps the Sermon on 
the Mount. Poussin appears worthily by the side of Lorrain in the 
gallery at Grosvenor-street. M. Waagen admires particularly Calisto 
changed into a Bear, and placed by Jupiter among the Constellations, 
and still more a Virgin with the infant Jesus surrounded by Angels. 
He extols in this morceau the surpassing clearness of coloring, the 
noble and melancholy sentiment of nature, together with a warm and 
powerful tone. ~K. Waagen places this painting amongst the master- 
pieces of the French painter (gehdrt zu dem wrtrefflichsten was ich von 
ihm henne). Whilst fully concurring in this judgment, we beg leave 
to point out in the same gallery two other canvases of Poussin, two 
delicious pieces from the easel, first a touching episode in Moses strik- 
ing the Bock, in the gallery of Lord Ellesmere, of a mother who, 
heedless of herself, hastens to give her children drink, whilst their 
father bends in thanksgiving to God ; the other, Children at play. 
Never did a more delightful scene come from the pencil of Albano. 
Two children look, laughing, at each other; another to the right 
holds a butterfly on his finger ; a fourth endeavors to catch a butter- 
fly which is flying from him ; a fifth, stooping, takes fruit from a 
basket. 

But we must quit the London galleries to betake ourselves to that 
which forms the ornament of the college situated in the charming 
village of Dulwich. 

Stanislas, king of Poland, charged a London amateur, M. Noel 
Desenfans, to form him a collection of pictures. The misfortunes of 
Stanislas, and the dismemberment of Poland left on M. Desenfans' 
hands all he had collected ; these he macfe a present of to a friend of 



APPENDIX. 

his, M. Bourgeois, a painter, who still further enriched this fine col- 
lection, and bequeathed it, at his death, to Dulwich College, where 
it now is in a very commodious and well-lighted building. It con- 
sists of nearly 350 paintings. M. "Waagen, who visited it, pronounces 
judgment with some severity. The catalogue is ill-compiled, it is 
true, but in this it does not differ from numerous other catalogues. 
Mediocrity is frequently placed side by side with excellence, and 
copies given as originals ; this is the case with more than one gallery. 
This one, however, has to us the merit of containing a considerable 
number of French paintings, to some of which even M. Waagen can- 
not refuse his admiration. 

We will, first of all, mention without describing them, a Lenain, 
two Bourguignons, three portraits by Eigaud, or after Eigaud, a 
Louis XIV., a Boileau, and another personage unknown to us, two 
Lebruns, the Massacre of the Innocents, and Horatius Codes defend- 
ing the Bridge, in which M. Waagen discovers happy imitations of 
Poussin, three or four Gaspars and seven Claude Lorrains, the beauty 
of most of which is a sufficient guarantee of their authenticity ; to- 
gether with a very fine Fete champetre by Watteau, and a View near 
Borne, by Joseph Vernet. Of Poussin, the catalogue points out 
eighteen, of which the following is a list : 

No. 115. The Education of Bacchus ; 142, a Landscape; 249, a 
Holy Family ; 253, the Apparition of the Angels to Abraham ; 260, 
a Landscape; 269, the Destruction of Niobe ; 279, a Landscape; 
291, the Adoration of the Magi ; 292, a Landscape; 295, the In- 
spiration of the Poet; 300, the Education of Jupiter ; 305, the 
Triumph of David ; 310, the Flight into Egypt; 315, Renald and 
Armida ; 316, Venus and Mercury ; 325, Jupiter and Antiope ; 
336, the Assumption of the Virgin ; 352, Children. 

Of these eighteen pictures, M. Waagen singles out five, which he 
thus characterizes : 

The Assumption of the Virgin, No. 336. In a landscape of power- 
ful poesy, the Virgin is carried off to heaven in clouds of gold : a 
small picture, of which the sentiment is noble and pure, the coloring 
strong and transparent {in der Faroe hraftiges und Tclaares Bild). 
Children, No. 352. Eeplete with loveliness and charm. The 
Triumph of David, No. 305. A rich picture, but theatrical. 

Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea, No. 300. A charming 
composition, transparent tone. A Landscape, No. 260. A well- 



poussin. 389 

drawn landscape, breathing a profound sentiment of nature; but 
which has become rather blackened. 

^Ve are unable to recognize in the Triumph of David the theatri- 
cal character which shocked M. Waagen. On the contrary, we per- 
ceive a bold and almost wild expression, a great deal of passion finely 
subdued. 

A triumph must always contain some formality ; here, however, 
there is the least possible, and that with which we are struck is its 
vigor and truth to nature. The giant's head stuck on the pike has 
the grandest effect : and we believe that the able German critic has. 
in this instance, likewise yielded to the prejudices of his country, 
which, in its passion for what it styles reality, fancies it perceives 
the theatrical in whatever is noble. ^Ve admit that at the close of 
the seventeenth century, under Louis XIY. and Lebrun. the noble 
was merged in the theatrical and academic ; but under Louis XIII. 
and the Regency, in the time of Corneille and Poussin, the academic 
and theatrical style vras wholly unknown. "We entreat the sagacious 
critic not to forget this distinction between the divisions of the seven- 
teenth century, nor to confound the master with his disciples, who, 
although they were still great, had slightly degenerated, and who 
were oppressed by the taste of the age of Louis XIY. 

But our gravest reproach against M. Waagen is. that he did not 
notice at Dulwich numerous morceaux of Poussin, which well merited 
his attention : amongst others, the Adoration of the Ifagi, far supe- 
rior, for its coloring, to that in the Museum at Paris ; and, above all, 
a picture which seems to us a masterpiece in the difficult art of con- 
veying a philosophic idea under the living form of a myth and an 
allegory. 

In this art, Poussin excelled : he is pre-eminently a philosophical 
artist, a thinker assisted by all the resources of the science of design. 
He has ever an idea which guides his hand, and which is his main 
object. Let us not tire to reiterate this : it is moral beauty which 
he everywhere seeks, both in nature and humanity. As we have 
stated in relation to the sacrament of Ordination, the landscapes of 
Poussin are almost always designed to set off and heighten human 
life, whilst Claude is essentially a landscape painter, with whom both 
history and humanity are made subservient to nature. Subjects de- 
rived from Christianity were exactly suited to Poussin. inasmuch as 
they afforded the sublimest types of that moral grandeur in which 



390 APPENDIX. 

he delighted, although we do not see in him the exquisite piety of 
Lesueur and Champagne ; and if Christian greatness speaks to his 
soul, it appears to do so with no authority beyond that of Phocion, 
of Scipio, or of Germanicus. Sometimes neither sacred nor profane 
history suffices him: he invents, he imagines, he has recourse to 
moral and philosophic allegory. It is here, perhaps, that he is most 
original, and that his imagination displays itself in its greatest free- 
dom and elevation. Arcadia is a lesson of high philosophy under 
the form of an idyll. The Testament of Eudamidas portrays the 
sublime confidence of friendship. Time Rescuing Truth from the 
assaults of Envy and Discord, the Ballet of Human Life, are cele- 
brated models of this style. We have had the good fortune to meet 
at Dulwich with a work of Poussin's almost unknown, and of whose 
existence we had not even an idea, sparkling at the same time with 
the style we have been describing, and with the most eminent quali- 
ties of the chief of the French school. 

This work, entirely new to us, is a picture of very small size, 
marked No. 295, and described in the catalogue as The Inspiration 
of the Poet, a delightful subject, and treated in the most delightful 
manner. Fancy the freshest landscape, in the foreground a harmo- 
nious group of three personages. The poet, on bended knee, carries 
to his lips the sacred cup which Apollo, the god of poesy, has pre- 
sented to him. Whilst he quaifs, inspiration seizes him, his face is 
transfigured, and the sacred intoxication becomes apparent in the 
motion of his hands and his whole body. Beside Apollo, the Muse 
prepares to collect the songs of the poet. Above this group, a 
genius, frolicking in air, weaves a chaplet, whilst other genii scatter 
flowers. In the background, the clearest horizon. Grace, spirit, 
depth — this enchanting composition unites the whole. Added to 
this, the color is well-grounded and of great brilliancy. 

It is very singular that neither Bellori nor Felibien, who both lived 
on terms of intimacy with Poussin, and are still his best historians, 
say not a word of this work. It is not referred to in the catalogues 
of Florent Lecomte, of Gault de St. Germain, or of Castellan ; nor 
does M. Waagen himself, who, having been at Dulwich, must have 
seen it there, make the least mention of it. We are, therefore, igno- 
rant in what year, on what occasion, and for whom this delicious 
little painting was executed : but the hand of Poussin is seen through- 
out, in the drawing, in the composition, in the expression. Nothing 



poussin. 391 

theatrical or vulgar : truth combined with beauty. The whole scene 
conveys unmixed delight, and its impression is at once serene and 
profound. In our idea, The Inspiration of the Poet may be ranked 
as almost equal with The Arcadia. 

Notwithstanding this, Tfie Inspiration has never been engraved ■ 
at least we have not met with it in any of the rich collections of en- 
gravings from Poussin we have been enabled to consult, those of M. 
de Baudicour, of M. Gatteaux, member of the Academy of Fine Arts, 
and lastly, the cabinet of prints in the Bibliotheque Rationale. We 
hope that these few words may suggest to some French engraver the 
idea of undertaking the very easy pilgrimage to Dulwich, and making 
known to the lovers of national art an ingenious and touching pro- 
duction of Poussin, strayed and lost, as it were, in a foreign collec- 
tion. 



FINIS- 



APPLETON'S EDITION OF THE BRITISH POETS. 



PKOSPECTUS 

OF A 

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It is believed that this will render the present edition of the British Poets the mos* 
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intended to include the following authors: — 



ADDISON. 


COWPER, 


GRAIIAME. 


OPIE. 


SPENSER. 


AK.ENSIDE. 


CRABBE. 


GRAY. 


PARNELL. 


SUCKLING. 


ARMSTRONG. 


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nOGG. 


RAMSAY. 


VAUGHAN, H. 


BURNS. 


DRUMMOND, 


JAMES L 


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DRY DEN. 


JONES. 


ROSCOMMON. 


WARTON, J. 


BYRON. 


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WARTON, T. 


CAMPBELL. 


OYER. 


JONSON. 


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WATTS. 


OAREW. 


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LRYDEN. 


SCOTT, .1 


WHITE, 11. K 


CM ATTERTON. 


FERGUSSON. 


LLOYD. 


SCOTT, SI I W. 


WITHER. 


CIIAUOr.R. 


FLETCHER, G. 


LOGAN. 


SHAKSPRARE. 


WILKIK. 


CHURCHILL. 


GAY. 


MAOI'ilKRSON. 


SHELLEY. 


WOLCOTT. 


CLARE. 


GIFFORD. 


MALLETT. 


si h:\stonk. 


WOLFE. 


COLERIDGE. 


GLOVER. 


M VRVEL. 


SM WIT. 


WYATT. 


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GOLDSMITH. 


MILTON. 


SMOLLETT. 


YOUNG. 


COWLEY, 


BOWES. 


MOORE. 


SOMKRVILLE. 





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nations — on Scripr'iral and Secular History — and on Education, with various other subjects %ji 
Political Economy. It will be a suitable counterpart to the ' Life and Correspondence of Dr. 
Arnold,' and scholars who have been so deeply interested in that impressive biography will h* 
gratified to ascertain the deliberate judgment of the Author, upon the numerous Important 
themes which his ' Miscellaneous Works ' so richly and clearly announce." 

THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THOMAS 

ARNOLD, D. D. 
By Arthur P. Stanley. A. M. 2d American from the fifth London edition. 

One handsome 8vo. volume. $2 00. 
4 This work should be in the hands of every one who lives and thinks fo> his race and fas 
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Standard Historical Works, 
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THE HLSTORY OF ROME. 

By THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D., Late Kegius Professor of Modern His- 
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SchooL 1 large vol. 8vo. pp. 686. Price $3. " 

II. 
HISTORY OF FRANCE, 

FEOM THE EAELIEST PEEIOD TO THE PEESENT TIME. 
By M. MICHELET, Professor a la Faculte des Lettres, Professor a 
l'Ecole Normale, &c. Translated by G. H. Smith, F. G. S. 2 vols. 
8vo. pp. 480 and 400. Price $3 50. 

III. 

HISTORY OF GERMANY, 

FEOM THE EAELIEST PEEIOD TO THE PEESENT TIME. 
By FREDERICK KOHLRAUSCH. Translated from the last German 
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or, an Illustrated Edition, neatly bound, $2 50. 

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HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 

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Ey LORD MAHON. 2 large vols. 8vo. pp. 590, 609, well printed, $4. 

A DIGEST OF THE LAWS, CUSTOMS, MANNERS, AND 
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NATIONS. 

By THOMAS DEW, Late President of the College of William and 
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A MANUAL OF ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY. 

By W. C. TAYLOR, LL. D., &c. 1 large volume, Svo. pp. 866. Price 2 25. 

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THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION, FROM THE FALL OF 

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Important Philosophical Works. 



PHILOSOPHY OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART., 

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and edited by O. W. WIGHT, Translator of Cousin's "History of 
Modern Philosophy." One vol. 8vo., pp. 530, well printed. $1 50. 

"Sir "William Hamilton has attained to the very highest distinction as a philosopher, 
and in some respects he is decidedly superior to any of his illustrious predecessors — 
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he combines great decision and elegance of style, and a degree of erudition that is 
almost without a parallel."— Edinburgh Review. 



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COURSE OF THE HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 

By M. VICTOR COUSIN. Translated by 0. W. Wight. Two volumes 

8vo., well printed. Price $3. 



III. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 

From the French of VICTOR COUSIN. Translated, with notes, by J. 

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LECTURES ON THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND 

THE GOOD. 

By VICTOR COUSIN. Translated by 0. W. Wight. One neat vol. 8vo. 

"M. Cousin is the greatest philosopher of France." — Sir William Hamilton. 

" A writer, whose pointed periods have touched the chords of modern society, and 
thrilled through the minds of thousands in almost every quarter of the civilized world." 
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V. 

THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTE COMTE. 

Freely Translated and Condensed by HARRIET MARTINEAU. Two 
volumes 8vo. pp. 516, 577, well printed. Price $4. 



WORKS BY M. MICHELET. 

Published by D. Appleton <$• Co., 200 Broadway 

HISTORY OF FRANCE. 

FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD. 
TRANSLATED BY G. H. SMITH, F. G. S 

Two handsome 8vo, volumes. $> 3 50. 
" So graphic, so life-like, so dramatic a historian as Michelot, we know not wlirn 
else to iook for. The countries, the races of men, the times, pass vividly before yon 
is you peruse his animated pages, where we find nothing of diffusene9s or irrelevui 
ey. 1« is a masterly work, and the publishers are doing the reading public a serv.4 
hj producing it iu so unexceptionable and cheap an edition." — Tribune. 

HISTORY 

OF THE 

ROMAN REPUBLIC. 

One handsome 12mo. volume. Paper cover 75 cts. Cloth $1. 

' M. Miehelet, in his History of the Roman Republic, first introduces the readej 
to the Ancient Geography of Italy ; then by giving an excellent picture of the present 
state of Rome and the surrounding country, full of grand ruins, he excites in th« 
reader the desire to investigate the ancient history of this wonderful land. He nexl 
imparts the results of the latest investigations, entire, deeply studied and clearlj 
arranged, and saves the u leducated reader the trouble of investigating the sources, 
while he gives to the more educated mind an impetus to study the literature from 
which he gives very accurate quotations in his notes. He describes the peculiarities 
and the life of the Roman people in a masterly manner, and ho fascinates every 
reader, by the brilliant clearness and vivid freshness of his style, while he shows 
himself a good historian, by the justness and impartiality with which he relates and 
philosophizes." 

THE LIFE 

OF 

M A R T I N LUTHER, 

GATHERED FROM HIS OWN WRITINGS 

By M. Miciielet: translated by G. H. Smith, F. G. S. 

One handsome volume, 12mo. Cloth 75 cts., Paper cover 50 cts. 

'^his work is not an historical romance, founded on the life of Marti n Luther 
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>-mposed of a series cf translations. Excepting that portion of it which litis refer- 
**•■» to his childhood, and which Luther himself has left undescribed, the iranslatoi 
»» rarely found occasion to make his own appearance on the scene. * * * * * 
It is almost invariably Luther himself who speaks, almost invariably Luther relate*! 
•y Luther. — Eztracl from M. MichsleCs Preface. 

THE PEOPLE. 

TRANSLATED BY G. H. SMITH, F. G. S. 
Or.3 neat volume, 12mo. Cloth 62 cts., Paper cover 3ft cts. 

" Thii boei ia more than a book ; it is myself, therefore it belongs to you • * 
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have made this book out of myself, out of my life, and out of my heart. I hann 
ierived it from my observation, from my relations of friendship and of neighborhood, 
wto picked it ep upon the roads. Chance loves to favor those who follow out oa« 
MBtiruous idea. Above all, I have found it in the recollections of my youth. Ta 
kaow the life of the people, thejr labor and their sufferings, I hail but to iut >rri-jr«»* 
m? memory.— -fiztratt from Author's Preface 



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THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D. 

The History of Rome. 

Keprnted entire from the last London Edition. Throe volumes in (mm 

£70. $3. 

" Arnold's History of Rome is a well known standard work. Full and accurate ■ 
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in value and importance. Its style is admirable, and it is every where imbued with tbs 
truth-loving spirit for which Dr. Arnold was pre-eminent For Colleges and School! 
Bus History is invaluable; and for private, as well as public libraries, it is indispensable." 



THOMAS ARNOLD, D. D. 

Lectures on Modem History. 

Edited, with a Preface and Notes, by Henry Reed, LL.D. 12rao» 
$1 25. 

Extract from the American Editor's Preface. :— "In preparing this edition, I bav« 
had in view its use, not only for the general reader, but also as a text-book in education, 
especially in our college course of study. * * * * The introduction of this work 
as a text-book I regard as important, because, as far as my information entitles me to 
•peak, there is no book better calculated to inspire an interest in historical study. That 
it has this power over the minds of students I can say from experience, which enables 
me also to add, that I have found it excellently suited to a course of college instruction. 
By intelligent and enterprising members of a class especially, it is studied as a text- 
book with zeal and animation. 

"These Lectures, eight in number, farnuh the best possible introduction to a philo- 
sophical study of modern history. Prof. Reed has added greatly to the worth and into** 
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writings as would more fully illustrate its prominent points. The Nctes and Appendix 
Which be has thus furnished are exceedingly valuable."— Evening Fosk 



PROF. FREDERICK KOHLRAUSCH. 

A History of Germany ; 

From the Earliest Period to the Present lime. Translated from tha 
last German Edition, by James D. Haas. With a Complete Index, 
prepared expressly for this Edition. 8vo. $1 75. 

•Messrs. Appleton: 

" Gentlemen,— Having adopted Kolrauscb's History of Germany, as a text-book ftf 
■h advanced class in history, I take irreat pleasure in stating that I have found no work, 
Is a wide range of historical Instruction, both ancient and modern, devoured with mnn 
avidity by my pupil3, or resulting in their greater profit. Next to the history of OBI 
*wn country and that of England, I know of none so important to be familiarly urder- 
■tood by our American youth, as the History of Germany; in its bearings on modern 
eiviliiation, the Protestant Reformation, the progress of literature, the advancement of 
the Arts and Sciences, and high classical scholarship, as well as also our own very origta 
and language. 

"The history of a nation with whose past and present w«» especially, not to say the 
whole civilized world, have such vital connections, though unknown perchance to a 
great extent to >ur eduuted men of a preceding generation, ought now to be introduced 
every where at once Into all our hish schools, as an essential part of a course of liberiJ 
education. " Yours, &c, 

"& W Dwioari 
" Brooklyn, jiin, lltn, ISOii." 
7 



D. Appleton & Co.'s Educational Publication 



PROP. G. P. QUACKENBOS. 

First Lessons in Composition, 

In which the Principles of the Art are Developed, in connection witto 
the Principles of Grammar; embracing full Directions on the Subjea 
of Punctuation : with Copious Exercises. 12mo. 45 cents. 

• # * Tliis work has received the universal approbation of Practical Teachers and tba 
of the United States. 



■ x From the Principal, and assistant Teachers, of the Mechanics' Institute, 2f, T. 

"With feelings of unfeigned pleasure, I have examined the 'First Lessons in Con- 
position, 1 by G. P. Quack knbos. 

"This work possesses the rare merit of combining what is new with what is alreadj 
familiar in publications of the science upon which it treats. The matter which is com- 
prised in the first fifty pages is invaluable. If the pupil be faithfully trained in tries* 
preliminary exercises, he will be amnjy prepared to appreciate the principles detailed i» 
the latter part of the volume. It is, without question, the best treatise that has ap- 
peared on the subject which it professes to illustrate, as every part can be made availa- 
ble to pupils by the judicious teacher; and it appears to be admirably adapted to nie** 
the present requirements of schools. 

J. T. BERGEN, Professor of Belles-lettres. 
M. C. TKAOY, Principal of Mec. Inst. School 
J. OVERACRE. 

"This book presents an exceedingly simple method of learning the principles 01 
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pupil, that it cannot fail to be a great assistant to the teachers of schools. It is pre- 
pared with much skill and judgment, and from the suggestions of long experience. It 
will be found to possess * more than ordinary intrinsic value." — N. Y. Courier <fi 
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PROP. JOHN W. S. HOWS, 

The Sliakspearian Beader ; 

A Collection of the most approved Plays of Shakspeare, carefully re 

vised ; with Introductory and Explanatory Notes, and a Memoir of the 

Author. Prepared expressly for the use of Classes and the Family 

Reading Circle. 12mo. $1 25. 

44 At a period when the fame of Shakflpaare is "striding the world like a colossus," 
nd editions of his works are multiplied with a profusion that testifies the desire &wak< 
used in all classes of society to read and study his imperishable compositions, — there 
needs, perhaps, but little apology for the following selection of his works, prepared ex- 
pressly to render them unexceptionable <br the use of Schools, and acceptable for Family 
reading. Apart from the fact, that Shakspeare is the "well spring" from which may be 
traced the origin of the purest poetry in our language, — a long course of professional ex* 
perience has satisfied me that a necessity exists for the addition of a work like the 
present, to our stock of Educational Literature. His writings are peculiarly adapted f"T 
the purpose of Elocutionary exercise, when the system of instruction pursued by the 
Teacher is based upon the true principle of the art, viz. — a careful analysis of the struc- 
ture and meaning of language, rather than a servile adherence to the arbitrary and ine 
ehanica'. rules of Elocution. 

"To impress upon the mind of the pupil that words are the exposition of thonet A, 
and that in reading, or speaking, every shade of thought and feeling has is appropriate 
•hade of modulated tone, ought to be the especial aim of every Teacher; and an author 
like Shakspeare, whose every line embodies a volume of meaning, should surely form 
one of our Elocutionary Text Books. * * * Still, in preparing a selection of hi" 
•rorks lor the express purpose contemplated in my design, I have not hesitated to exer- 
cise a severe revision of his language, beyond that adopted in any similar undertaking 
— "Bowdlcrs Familj' Shakspeare" not even excepted ; — and simply, because I practi- 
cally know the impossibility of introducing Shakspeare as a Class Book, or as a satisfac- 
tory Reading Book for Families without this precautionary revision'* — Extract 
the Preface. „ 
6 



Xj YEXjXj'S Gr E O Xj O G- I 33 25 . 

D. APPLET01N T AND COMPANY 

II AVE RECENTLY PUBLISHED NEW EDITIONS OF 
I. 

A MANUAL 

OF 

ELEMENTARY GEOLOGY; 

Or, the Ancient Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants, 

AS ILLUSTRATED BY GEOLOGICAL MONUMENTS. 

BY SIR CHARLES LYELL. M. A., F. R. S., 

Author of ' i Princiyles of Geology,"" &c. <&c. 

Reprinted from the last London, Entirely Revised Edition. Illustrated with 500 "Wood-Cuts, 

One large Svo. Price $1 75. 



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standard hooks upon those subjects. This Manual has had a very great sale in England, and 
its successive editions have kept pace with the steady progress of geological science. To the 
last edition, new and important pages have been added, containing the latest discoveries in 
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other country can it be studied so profitably and with such practical results as in this."— 
Providence Journal. 

"This is a standard work, on one of the most wonderful of modern sciences. In connec 
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II. 

PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY : 

Or, the Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants. 

New and Entirely Revised Edition. Illustrated with numerous Maps, Plates, and Wood- 
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history of our planet and the theory of our species, of the duration of past time, of igneous 
force and its effects, and of those causes producing the various phenomena disporting over the 
ever-changing surface of our globe. 

Geology is intimately related to nearly all the physical sciences, and it were therefore 
desirable that the student be well versed in chemistry, mineralogy, zoology, botany, and in 
every branch embracing the subjects of organic and inorganic nature. Cosmogony, or the 
origination of the earth, with which this science has been often confounded, is a distinct theory 
and III no wise concerned with geology."— The Cultivator. 



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